The Hope Flower

Description

From the bestselling author of Mallawindy and the Woody Creek series comes a story of love and survival. Lori Smyth-Owen isn't your average teenager - as you'd expect from the only girl in a family of twelve. Or they were a family, until their father took his own life to escape his bed-bound wife, too obese to leave her room. But for Lori and the remaining brothers, there is no escape from their volatile, mentally unstable mother. They raise themselves away from the gaze of the authorities, realising that though abandoned, they are now in charge. They can control everything, including their mother's food intake. In time, their mother emerges, after losing two-thirds of her body weight. But does she bring with her the seed of hope for a better future, or will all hell break loose? 'The texture of the writing as well as the mind-boggling plots give her books a fatally addictive attraction' Saturday Age

Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry's Daughter, One Sunday, Pearl in a Cage, Thorn on the Rose, Moth to the Flame, Wind in the Wires, Ripples on a Pond, The Tying of Threads, The Silent Inheritance and Trails in the Dust.