CHILD OF MINE

Spanning three decades, Child of Mine is a deeply resonant novel about a maternal tug-of-love and the little girl caught in the middle.

It's January 1974, and a devastating flood is about to change the lives of four generations of women. Maggie Rowe is thirty-five, a teacher, and still living with her mother, Vera, in a tiny cottage in Hill Street, Brisbane. Next door lives Donna Birtles, a feckless, twentysomething single mum and her little daughter Flower.

Early one rain-drenched morning at the height of the flood, Donna and Flower seek shelter with Maggie and Vera.

However once the water recedes, Donna seems reluctant to move out, particularly when she meets Roddy, a casual worker on the clean-up gang. With Donna now disappearing for months on end, Maggie is forced to take on the role of Flower's guardian at the expense of her own hopes and longings.

Flower is the daughter Maggie never had. And she's the daughter Donna had but didn't want. So when Donna finally returns to reclaim her child, who has the right to be her mother?

A haunting and deeply emotional story about mothers and daughters, and to a lesser extent about friends and lovers, CHILD OF MINE is also a novel about conflicting desires and the slipperiness of words.

Janita Cunnington has been writing for much of her life, mostly under the desk verse, stories, articles, musings when her mind should have been on important matters. Janita was born at the end of World War II in the small New South Wales town of Barraba. She now lives near the sea again, on lovely, salt-stung Stradbroke Island.