Well I’m back at my desk – sort of. After 4.5 weeks touring and the odd Absolution Creek event since we’re at the pointy end of the year on-property with cattle sales and harvest happening. Today, friend, News Ltd journo and soon-to-be Australian Women’s Weekly star Caroline Overington talks about her new book. ‘Sisters of Mercy’. With Caroline’s background steeped in court-reporting, drama-mysteries don’t get much more authentic than this!

“I wrote my first novel a little over five years ago. It was about the murder of a child – but also about how the murder of a child impacts upon that child’s siblings, in particular, the little sister who witnessed the crime.  That book, Ghost Child, was based on a real story, one that I’d come across while working as a reporter for News Ltd. I wrote it mainly because I had some things I wanted to say about the abuse and neglect of children, and how we, as a community, should be doing more to assist those who are vulnerable. In the years since then, I’ve written another two novels – I Came To Say Goodbye, and Matilda is Missing –  one of which is about mental health, and the other of which is about a bitter custody dispute. In each case, I felt that what I was trying to do was show how desperately some people live, in our so-called “lucky” country. I also wanted to pay tribute to some of the hardest working, least well paid members of the female workforce: nurses, police officers, social workers. All of the stories I wrote were motivated, or inspired, by things I had seen in the real world, while working as a reporter.

 When the time came to write my fourth novel, Sisters of Mercy, which is out on November 1, I knew that I wanted to keep a social justice flavour in the narrative. But I was also keen to explore what I believe is one of the most complex relationships in the human family: that of sisters. 

Sisters are assumed to know each other very well. They grow up together, often sharing a room. They are usually close in age. They might share clothes. They have the same parents. They go to the same schools. If you’re lucky, it can be the most rewarding, enriching, delightful relationship of your life. But the relationships between sisters are also complex. There can be rivalry and jealousy. Sisters of Mercy is about two sisters, who might as well be strangers.

They are raised a generation, and a world apart, one in England during the war years, and one in Australia, after their parents have migrated. They come to know each other only when their father dies, and the Will is read. Within days of meeting, one of the sisters is missing, and other soon goes to jail, and the question for the reader is: what has happened here?  

In one sense, it was a format with which I was familiar: crime, and drama. On the other hand, it was new to me, to look at a relationship like this: people who should be close, but aren’t. It’s always for the reader to decide how well I succeeded in my task, but I enjoyed the process, the same way that you always enjoy something that is difficult, but that you’ve finally done.  

And when I was finished, I rang up my sister and said: Let’s go on a holiday together. So we packed our bags and off we went, and we shared a room, and went shopping together, and tried on clothes, and talked about when we were young.  And it was great!