Hi everyone! I’m so thrilled to be able to finally share the front cover of my new book, which will be published on the 27th of July There’s a bit that I want to say about the cover, so bear with me while I do a little thread, but here it is:

When my editor first showed me the cover, it took my breath away. It’s *beautiful*. But then straight away something occurred to me: it’s a book about the Australian environment. So shouldn’t the plants be Australian? Shouldn’t it be eucalypts and wattles, not oaks and rosehips?

But then I thought a bit more about it. The book is about how much damage two centuries and counting of European colonialism has done to the Australian environment. That damage has included the introduction of foreign, Northern Hemisphere species.

So much of colonisation, here and elsewhere, is an attempt to forcibly change complex and distinct ecosystems into something they’re not, something which is more familiar and comforting to the colonisers - something “from home”.

So I looked again at the cover. And I saw how those foreign plants on it, the oak, rosehip, etc, were presented in a highly stylised, decorative way. And I saw how that contrasted so starkly with the realistic, naturalistic depiction of the quoll.

And I came to appreciate the subtle tension in the cover: the fantasy of an idealised European environment overlaid upon the more complex reality of what was already on this continent. And I came to realise that it was a PERFECT cover for my book.

I couldn’t be happier with the cover. It’s thematically rich and thought-provoking but not obvious. It’s such a gift as an author to have a cover which engages with the text so meaningfully, so a huge thanks to Christa Moffitt at Christabella Designs. I can’t wait to hold it.

Oh and PS, here’s the back cover blurb if you want to know a little more about the book: