ISBN: 9781761472237
Blackgum Item Code: ALUN0734
Title: The River Wife
Author: Heather Rose
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
RRP: $24.99
More information:
'One day love lay down by the river. He slept in a blue patterned shirt and through the afternoon he did not stir but dreamed with the river's song beside him. When he woke he saw me.
Love was not the pattern of leaves and the texture of bark, it was not the underbelly of river or the way of fish, though all that was here was part of it. Love was the passing of the sky across a face, it was the arc of conversation, the thought of forever, the yearning to go on and never back, the desire to be something other than I was.
This is the story of a river and the making of stories and the nature of love. Some would say that any story of water is always a story of magic, and others would say any story of love was the same. And being a love story it begins with a broken heart.'

The River Wife is a fable both ancient and modern. The river wife - a woman by day and a fish by night - is bound by the river she tends but falls in love with a man. Tender and melancholy, it speaks to desire and love, mothers and daughters, kinship and care, duty and sacrifice, water and wisdom. The River Wife is a magical, grave and beautiful myth - a true original.