The Grass Castle

Secrets in the mountains. Two women ensnared by the past. A story of friendship, high country history and kangaroos.

Eighty-six-year-old Daphne and university student Abby meet by chance on land which used to belong to Daphne’s family. Now it’s part of a National Park grazed by mobs of kangaroos instead of cattle. Both women are lonely and lost. Daphne has never come to terms with being forced from her country, and Abby is still living with the memory of a traumatic childhood. Through their love of the mountains they find a connection, and they help each other in unexpected ways. But Daphne’s health is ailing, and Abby is struggling to commit to love, and there’s a proposal to cull the kangaroos. Both women must confront long-buried family secrets before they discover that perhaps friendship can deliver a new beginning.

Set in Miles Franklin’s Brindabella Ranges, also the home of Gwen Meredith’s Blue Hills, The Grass Castle is a heartfelt, moving novel of friendship, loss and recovery, connection to the land and the Indigenous past. By the bestselling author of The Lightkeeper’s Wife.