Paula Xiberras
Lexi Landsman always wanted to be a writer and wrote poetry and short stories in high school. For Lexi part of her creativity was reflecting in the natural world, tending her garden and walking through cornfields and it’s the beautiful image of a mother observing her son running through a field which forms the cover of the novel.
Lexi Landsman remembers seeing the movie Dumbo when she was a child and how it left her with incredible wonder, she ponders how, now as an adult her perspective has changed.
Perspectives play a part in Lexi’s novel, which we chatted about recently, ‘The Ties that Bind’ is about family ties and the breaking of them but how ultimately our perspectives do change as we realise, though the emotional binds might severe the physical ones never can.
At the heart of Lexi’s writing is family and its interconnectedness, the drama of family relationships and the secrets and mysteries that seek to undo them.
The story revolves around a couple in the US, Courtney and David, who discover their son Matthew has a life threatening disease and needs a bone marrow transplant. Courtney is adopted and so must trace her birth mother far away in Australia in the hopes of finding a relative that might prove a suitable donor.
In Australia, Courtney discovers a sister she never knew she had who is going through her own rough times with her rural property damaged by fire but she is equally damaged by other ashes in the form of her appropriately named mother Asha who had deserted the family.
Lexi has given us a novel that challenges our perspective on family and how in times of crisis it is the place go back to.
The Ties that Bind is out now published by Random House
