Literary and literal inspiration

Kyra’s mother and grandmother

Humble family beginnings in the outback planted early seeds for The Story Thief.

This photo was taken by my father in 1972, the year I was born, in front of our modest family home in Andamooka, a remote outback town located in the South Australian opal fields, where I lived for the first two years of my life. Although you can’t actually see me here, I think it’s safe to presume that behind the sunshade of that pram, little baby Kyra is sleeping (or, knowing me, stubbornly fighting against it). My mother and grandmother stand beside me - proud and protective. 

My parents were both born during the later years of WWII in the beautiful but bomb-ravaged Hanseatic town of Bremen in Germany. They met as teenagers and came to Australia in 1965 as newlyweds, seeking adventure. Little did they know their move would be permanent. 

Despite the rather humble circumstances of this photo setting, right down to the red dirt beneath my pram - so very different from the cultured cities and parklands of Europe - it amazes me that there is no sign of concern on the face of my Oma (pictured here during her first visit from Germany, a voyage she made only three times), and no hint of resentment towards my father for taking her youngest daughter to this alien landscape at the far ends of the earth. Australia! My beautiful mother, who apparently always had a taste for stylish, expensive clothing, looks utterly incongruous here in her fashionable ensemble and knee-high suede boots, and yet she appears perfectly content and at ease.

The idea for The Story Thief began ten years ago in 2014 during my mature-age university studies when I first came across Henry Lawson’s classic Australian story, 'The Drover’s Wife’, and some of its best known retellings. It bothered me that Lawson chose to leave the heroine and her daughters unnamed, whilst naming the two boys and even the family dog. But although it was this gender-driven injustice which first leapt out at me, and convinced me that I needed to retell Lawson’s story from a feminist perspective, it was not until later that I realised something else was at play. Several years into writing The Story Thief, it finally dawned on me that the setting of Lawson’s original story - a shabby, two-roomed house in an unspecified yet remote outback location - must have subconsciously tugged at my earliest memories of my first childhood home in Andamooka; that I must have seen myself in the unnamed infant daughter resting on the left hip of the drover’s wife, whom I called Lillian and cast as my protagonist.

Notwithstanding their happy smiles in this photo, I’m sorry to say that both my mother and grandmother endured a series of tragic losses around this time. A stillborn baby boy for my mother, two years before my own birth. And the premature death of my mum’s two older sisters; one dying of leukaemia, the other of breast cancer, leaving six young children between them. Imagine my mother’s guilt for having left her mother in Germany - already widowed, and now childless too - while she made a new life for herself with my father here in Australia. 

These heartbreaking losses, coupled with my mother's love for all of us, as well as the joy she found in art, literature and beauty, provided the emotional inspiration for Lillian’s fictional story of love, loss and survival in The Story Thief.

Her family's story made Henry Lawson famous. But was it his story to tell?
Fact and fiction meld into one in this stirring family saga set against shifting landscapes and pivotal moments in Australian history. Lillian was born in 1892, the same year Henry Lawson wrote 'The Drover's Wife' and cemented his place in Australia's literary canon. When Lillian reads the short story as a teenager, she is convinced that it is based upon her own family and becomes determined to prove it. But as the years pass, the truth becomes more problematic, and Lillian must decide what is more important: holding onto the past or embracing the future.

The Story Thief is Kyra Geddes’ debut historical novel, published by Affirm Press. It is about mothers and daughters, love, loss and the power of words. Ultimately it is about how each of us must find our own way to live. It's available online and from all good bookstores in paperback, ebook and audiobook form. 

You can find Kyra at www.kyrageddes.com or follow her on instagram @kyrageddes or facebook @kyrageddesauthor.