'This is the story of a remarkable individual life, a story rendered the more peculiar and fascinating by Blackburn's graceful prose and ever-surprising vision' - The Times
In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. And there she stayed, with occasional interruptions, for almost 30 years.
In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy. She fuses her own imagination and experience with that of Daisy Bates, unitl she seems to be recalling this other life as it it were her own.
Julia Blackburn has written a number of books of non-fiction, fiction and poetry. The Three of Us won the J. R. Ackerley Award, Threads won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award and the New Angle Prize, Time Song was shortlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize, and Thin Paths was shortlisted for the Costa Prize for Biography. Her two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper’s Companions, were both shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She lives in Suffolk and Italy.