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A lost classic of Depression era country life from Victoria’s Mallee region.
It’s the 1930s. Fran Addicott runs a country pub with her husband, Sam, in Victoria’s Mallee region. It’s not a glamorous life: the pub is old; the town struggling; and her husband—her second, she was widowed—is not all he could be. Life is a constant uphill battle, but what can she do? What should she do?
‘Fine Australian Novel’ declared The Australasian’s reviewer, Habakkuk, on The Wind on the Water’s original publication. ‘Miss Myra Morris is well known as a lyric poet and story-writer of rare sensitivity and insight …’ Habakkuk wrote, going on to describe the book as being ‘of really uncommon quality’.
More recently—in 2018—writing of the novel in Meanjin, Brigid Magner concluded: ‘Long out of print and virtually impossible to find second-hand, The Wind on the Water is a forgotten classic that deserves to be reprinted and introduced to a contemporary readership.’
The Wind on the Water was highly commended in the S.H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1935 and first published in 1938. An edited version was serialised in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1939, and it was adapted for ABC Radio in 1940.
Myra Morris (1893–1966) was a poet, short story writer, children’s author, journalist and novelist.