Hope Farm - Softcover

'Absorbing ... A beautifully-told story of courage and survival, Hope Farm is about growing up, belonging, and long-kept secrets.' --Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issy Bradley

Peggy Frew is an amazing writer and Hope Farm is a great novel that captures the pleasures and difficulties of being both a parent and of being a child. The complex story of Silver and Ishtar and their fraught relationship is beautifully written, acutely observed and, best of all, completely absorbing. I could almost feel the crisp Gippsland mornings, hear the birds warbling and smell the stale dope smoke. Hope Farm is elegant, tender and very wise. --Chris Womersley, award-winning author of Cairo and Bereft

[E]legiac, storied ... aligns itself with other novels in which children - out of rashness, anger or even ignorance - act out to terrible consequences. As with Briony in Ian McEwan's Atonement or Leo in L.P. Hartley s The Go-Between, these decisions are usually compounded by circumstance ... Frew does not want to pass judgment though. She understands that the sadness of childhood is to grow up in circumstances over which you have little or no control. --Jessica Au , Sydney Morning Herald

Peggy Frew's debut novel, House of Sticks, won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her story 'Home Visit' won The Age short story competition. She has been published in New Australian Stories 2, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, and Meanjin. Peggy is also a member of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Melbourne band Art of Fighting. Her latest novel is Hope Farm.