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Author

Leah Purcell

Leah Purcell (born 14 August 1970 in Murgon, Queensland) is an Australian actor, director and writer. She is a film, television and theatre actress, singer, director and playwright. She is the youngest of seven children of Aboriginal and white Australian descent. Her father was a butcher and a boxing trainer. After a difficult adolescence, looking after her sick mother who died while Leah was in her late teens, problems with alcohol and teenage motherhood, Purcell left Murgon and moved to Brisbane and became involved with community theatre. In 1996 she moved to Sydney to become presenter on a music video cable television station, RED Music Channel. This was followed by roles in the ABC television series Police Rescue and Fallen Angels. She co-wrote and acted in a play called Box the Pony, which played at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, the 1999 Edinburgh Festival and in 2000 at the Barbican Theatre in London. She then wrote and directed the documentary Black Chicks Talking, which won a 2002 Inside Film award. She appeared in the acclaimed Australian film Lantana starring Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush and in the theatre in The Vagina Monologues. She went on to feature in 2004 films Somersault, The Proposition (starring Guy Pearce and Emily Watson and written by Nick Cave) and Jindabyne (starring Gabriel Byrne) as well as playing the role of Condoleezza Rice in David Hare's play, Stuff Happens in Sydney and Melbourne.

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Title:

The Drover's Wife

Written by:

Leah Purcell 

Read by:

Leah Purcell 

Format:

Unabridged CD Audio Book 

Number of CDs:

8 

Duration:

9 hours 17 minutes 

Published:

December 01 2021 

Available Date:

December 01 2021 

Age Category:

Adult 

ISBN:

9780655629092 

Genres:

Fiction; Australian Fiction; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction 

Publisher:

Bolinda/Penguin Audio Australia 

Qty

Format

Price

Bolinda price

AUD$ 39.95

AUD$ 39.95

**

 

Bestselling author
Australian author

Longlisted ABIA 2020

The Drover's Wife is utterly authentic, brilliantly plotted, thoroughly harrowing and entirely of our times exploring race, gender, violence and inheritance.

Deep in the heart of Australia’s high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly’s children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection – but it can be harder when Joe’s around. At just 12 years of age, Molly’s eldest son Danny is the true man of the house, determined to see his mother and siblings safe – from raging floodwaters, hunger and intruders, man and reptile. Danny is mature beyond his years, but there are some things no child should see. He knows more than most just what it takes to be a drover’s wife. One night under the moon’s watch, Molly has a visitor of a different kind – a black ‘story keeper’, Yadaka. He’s on the run from authorities in the nearby town, and exchanges kindness for shelter. Both know that justice in this nation caught between two worlds can be as brutal as its landscape. But in their short time together, Yadaka shows Molly a secret truth, and the strength to imagine a different path. Full of fury and power, Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson is a brave reimagining of the Henry Lawson short story that has become an Australian classic. Brilliantly plotted, it is a compelling thriller of our pioneering past that confronts head-on issues of today: race, gender, violence and inheritance.

'The most important new Australian play written this year.'
Daily Review