Paula Xiberras
Rural author Fleur McDonald visited Tasmania in 2010 for AGFEST but hopes to make a trip in the school holidays next year. With a life lived on the land, first as a youngster on her parent’s South Australian farm and now on her own Western Australian farm, Fleur is highly qualified to write authentically about the rural life.
Her heroines are almost always strong women having to overcome hurdles in their lives. The author’s popularity has seen one of Fleurs book,’ Emerald Springs’ now made available on audio.
I talked to Fleur about her latest novel ‘Indigo Storm’. It’s interesting to note that in Chinese painting a variation on the colour indigo symbolises ‘ harmony of the universe’ and so in this novel our protagonist Ashleigh is looking to establish harmony in her life after the ‘storm’ of domestic violence from her husband Dominic, ironically, a noted pillar of the community.
Fleur explains she likes to tell the true country story, not just pure romance and likes to explore social issues such as domestic abuse in Indigo Storm. As Fleur puts it ‘The kind that produces a bruise on the soul where it can’t be seen’. Fleur believes the upsurge in interest in rural fiction is due to those many Australians who don’t live rurally but have a fascination or are intrigued by the nostalgia of Australia’s past when most of the population lived remotely. TV programs like McLeod’s Daughters have also dramatized to a wide audience many of the issues that resonate with the rural life.
Although Fleur doesn’t usually entertain the possibility of writing sequels she tells me she has thought about that option with her novel ‘Silver Clouds’ where feedback suggested readers wanted more.
Indigo Storm is out now published by Allen and Unwin
