Lady Bird & The Fox
About this ebook
It's 1868 and the gold rush is spreading across the wild west of New South Wales, bringing with it a new breed of colonial rogue - bushrangers. A world far removed from hardworking farm girl, Annie Bird, and her sleepy village on the outskirts of Sydney.
But when a cruel stroke of fortune sees Annie orphaned and outcast, she is forced to head for the goldfields in search of her grandfather, a legendary tracker. Determined and dangerously naive, she sets off with little but a swag full of hope - and is promptly robbed of it on the road.
Her cries for help attract another sort of rogue: Jem Fox, the waster son of a wealthy silversmith, who's already in trouble with the law - up to his neatly trimmed eyebrows in gambling debts. And now he does something much worse. He 'borrows' a horse and rides after the thieves, throwing Annie over the saddle as he goes.
What follows is a breakneck gallop through the Australian bush, a tale of mistaken identity and blind bigotry, of two headstrong opposites tossed together by fate, their lives entwined by a quest to get back home - and the irresistible forces of love.
'Kim Kelly seems to understand the sounds and scents of the country' - The West Australian
'colourful, evocative and energetic' - Sydney Morning Herald
'impressive research' - Daily Telegraph
'Why can't more people write like this?' - The Age
About the author
Kim is a writer of Australian fiction, author of eleven novels – Black Diamonds, This Red Earth, The Blue Mile, Paper Daisies, Wild Chicory, Jewel Sea, Lady Bird & The Fox, Sunshine, Walking, Her Last Words and The Truth & Addy Loest – tales of passion, politics and history, of ordinary people living through extraordinary times in the land Kim calls home.
Her latest novel, The Truth & Addy Loest, was published in February 2021, and is presently working on another. She is always working on another novel, and occasionally a short story, one of which, ‘Messerschmitt’, appears in the Hope Prize anthology, or a novella, one of which, ‘The Rat Catcher’, was shortlisted for Viva la Novella 2021.
When Kim is not writing, she is reading. In real life Kim is a book editor, better known on that side of the page as Kim Swivel, and regularly reviews for The Newtown Review of Books, too.
Raised in Sydney in a house that was humble except for its library and dinner-table debating style, Kim was always going to do wordy type things myself, and do them her own way. Home today is Central West New South Wales, where she is daily grateful to share a small slice of rolling green-and-gold Wiradjuri country with her muse de bloke, Deano, two cats and some chickens, and occasionally the kids when they come home to graze.
