AustLit

'You’d be forgiven for thinking that this review is some years late.

'As a playscript, Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife was given its rounds of critical acclaim and awards attention across 2016-17, taking out the Victorian Prize for Literature and the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year, among other ribbons. In this new iteration, titled The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, Purcell novelises her brutal and critical reply to Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story, in which an unnamed woman struggles with a snake and four children. Country is the enemy, and the hardened woman a virtue.' (Publication summary)