The Untold
This moving debut novel was inspired by the life of Australian Elizabeth Jessie Hickman, a runaway convict born in 1820. In Collins poetically reimagined tribute, 22-year-old Jessie is on the run after killing her brutal husband. She has recently given birth to a stillborn child whose spirit is somehow tethered to her mother and who narrates the story. Jessie has already lived a dramatic life; she once worked as a circus acrobat and then as a horse rustler but is now desperate to escape the posse of men who want to hang her for murder. While she runs, she thinks of her short, sweet relationship with the Aboriginal stockman Jack Brown, whose gentle ways were a welcome relief from the beatings administered by her drunken husband. She finds an idyllic camp in the mountains made up of desperate boys who steal horses and thinks she might finally have found a refuge, but the lawmen are not far behind. This intense read, with dark undertones of death and foreboding, contains breathtaking descriptions of the Australian bush and a lyrical homage to Jessie’s desperate quest for freedom. --Joanne Wilkinson