Open Invitation: Event Launch – The Cane

Sisters in Crime member, Philomena Horsley, will be in conversation with fellow member, Maryrose Cuskelly, to launch Maryrose’s debut novel, The Cane (Allen & Unwin). The Cane is set in Quala, a North Queensland sugar town, in the 1970s. A sixteen-year-old girl has been missing for weeks and the police have no leads. The locals are divided by dread and distrust. But the sugar crush is underway and the cane must be burned. As the smoke rises and tensions come to a head, the dark heart of Quala will be revealed, affecting the lives of all those who dwell beyond the cane.

Cuskelly is the author of Wedderburn: A true tale of blood and dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), which was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards. In 2016, she won the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay “Well before dark” about the disappearance of Mackay schoolgirl Marilyn Wallman in 1972. The Cane returns to some of the themes and preoccupations of that essay.

Horsley won the Scarlet Stiletto Award in 2018, was runner-up in 2019, and is working on her first novel. She is a medical anthropologist who provides consultancy in the fields of health research and ethics. Her research areas include autopsies – their history and their role in understanding death – as well as family violence, sexual violence, and cancer. She also coordinates judging for Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards.

Free but bookings essential.