Author(s): Rodney Hall

Miles Franklin Winners

"In his stunning new novel, Rodney Hall tells a gripping story of fanaticism, religious cults, and murder." "Catherine Byrne is a nineteenth-century English missionary who travels to remotest Australia with her prophetic husband and his band of women disciples. Named Muley Moloch after an Irishman whose soul he is determined to save, he is a preacher of miraculous powers who leads his followers through severe hardship - shipwreck, disease, and death - in their millenarian quest. When the local police investigator shows up to ask Catherine about a brutal homicide, she finds she has a great deal to tell him, about innocence and evil, suffering and redemption, visions and nightmares." "Set at the dawn of the modern era, when steam power, photography, and household appliances were just beginning to reach the outposts of civilization, The Grisly Wife completes Rodney Hall's imaginative trilogy of colonial Australia, and, along with Captivity Captive and The Second Bridegroom, is destined to become a classic of world literature."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved