Paula Xiberras
A while ago I spoke to Annie Seaton, author of a new brand of rural fiction. Her latest novel ‘Kakadu Sunset’ features heroine Ellie Porter, a helicopter pilot who discovers something not quite right is going on in beautiful Kakadu. Ellie has suffered the loss of her family farm and even worse the loss of her beloved father to suicide.
In her work Ellie is assigned a co-pilot, Kane who, although a difficult man to get on with at times (as he too suffers from trauma of another kind, that of a returned soldier), is also as sweet as cane sugar and for all her good intentions Ellie cannot resist!
As well as being at the heart a romance, the novel tackles some of the difficult issues of rural living such as suicide and the environmental challenges of procedures like fracking that threaten to destroy the functioning and beauty of a place like Kakadu.
Annie recalls from the early age she was destined to be a writer, she recalls as a four year old at the local library in Brisbane falling in love with books, her favourites being Enid Blyton and Mary Grant Bruce.
Annie even wrote her first book at 11 years old. She continued to write short stories in her adult life but career, marriage, family and children intervened. Anne is now returning to writing and in the burgeoning area of rural fiction
As to why people are being drawn to rural fiction Annie believes ‘it is a nostalgic return to the real Australia and all its defining characteristics includes the larrikinism, the bush and characters that are icons of Australia’.
Kakadu Sunset is out now published by Pan Macmillan Australia
