“ And as an admirer of Debra Oswald's play The Peach Season, I was glad to see this deft and original exploration of the parent-child relationship given the more capacious quarters afforded by a novel in The Whole Bright Year ”
Geraldine Brooks, The Sydney Morning Herald
Audio Download
9780143792345
March 1, 2018
Penguin Random House Australia Audio
Trade Paperback
9780143788256
January 29, 2018
Viking
288 pages
EBook
9780143788263
January 29, 2018
Penguin eBooks
304 pages
Part One
One
The trees were loaded with fruit, and the peaches were colouring up well. Pallets of packing boxes waited in the shed, the coolroom scrubbed out, everything ready to go. But where Roza should have been able to see four or more pickers working in the orchard, there were just two people slogging away.
The regular picking team had failed to show. The team boss, Roy, was usually reliable – even if that man’s breath was sour enough to pickle your eyeballs – but already it had been three days with no pickers. And so, Celia and Zoe, mother and daughter, were bringing in some of the peaches until things were sorted out.
The two of them had been working since five a.m. and now, mid-afternoon, the sun was fierce and their shirts were soaked with sweat, shoulders slumped from the weight of the picking bags.
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