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A stunningly original debut novel by Sydney author Pip Smith, inspired by the real life Eugenia Falleni, who was discovered in 1920's Sydney to have been living as a man for many years, and even married twice!
Sydney, 1938. After being hit by a car on Oxford Street, sixty-three-year-old Jean Ford lies in a coma in Sydney Hospital. Doctors talk across her body, nurses jab her in the arm with morphine, detectives arrive to take her fingerprints. She has £100 in her pocket, but no identification. Memories come back to her-a murder trial, a life in prison-but with each prick of the needle her memories begin to shift.
Wellington, 1885. Tally Ho doesn't need to go to school because she is going to be a fisherman or a cart driver or a butcher boy like Harry Crawford. Wellington is her town and she makes up the rules. Papà takes her fishing, Nonno teaches her how to jump fences on his horse Geronimo-life gallops on the way it should, until a brother, baby William, is born. 'Go and play with your sisters,' Papà says, but wearing dresses and sipping tea is not the life for Tally Ho. Taking the advice of her hero, Harry Crawford, she runs away.
Sydney, 1917. The burned body of a woman is discovered on the banks of the Lane Cove River. Was she a mad woman? A drunk who'd accidentally set herself on fire? Nobody knows, until-three years later-a tailor's apprentice tells police that his mother went missing that same weekend, and that his stepfather, Harry Crawford, is not who he seems to be. Who, then, is he?
Check out Mark Tedeschi's account of the life and trial of the real Eugenia here.
'Pip Smith has always been an agent of change. With her powerful debut novel, ''Half Wild'', she will surely change the way we read, write, think and talk about Australian fiction.' - Sam Twyford-Moore, host of The Rereaders podcast and former director of the Emerging Writers' Festival
Author: Pip Smith
Trade Paperback, 400 pages, Published July 2017