Wildflowers, the kind that burst through the swathes of dry grass along stretches of Australian country highways, seem to exist despite the most unforgiving conditions. Where do they come from? And how do they survive? Peggy Frew asks similar questions of the three sisters at the centre of Wildflowers, an intimate story about the roles we are cast in by our family, and our obligations to them.
The Miles Franklin and Stella prize-shortlisted author of Hope Farm has been honing in on questions of identity and familial responsibility for some time now, but in Wildflowers she gets right to the heart of things. Nina is 37 and lives alone, her days defined by a series of increasingly odd routines. She is broken, struggling to find meaning in her life, particularly in the wake of an intensely traumatic trip away, when she and her older sister, Meg, effectively kidnap their younger, wilder sister Amber, in an attempt to force her to stop using drugs. Nina’s present-day apathy bookends the novel, which for the most part is a flashback to that intense, damaging trip to the rainforest of far-north Queensland.
