'Tis the Doing Not the Deed

At the heart of the novel is a ‘what if’ someone does something – the ‘doing’ – for noble reasons but the ‘deed’ that results causes unfortunate consequences that echo through generations? I have used the story of Elizabeth Durack, sister of Mary who wrote Kings in Grass Castles about the family’s vast cattle empire across the northern reaches of the Australian continent, for my artist character: Constance Crookstone. Elizabeth was a successful artist. Many of her works were influenced by her time spent on the family acreages and among the groups of Indigenous people who had always lived there, for example, Black Madonna.
Late in her life Elizabeth created a series of paintings signed ‘Eddy Burrup’ – an Indigenous man. The works attracted critical attention when entered in Aboriginal art awards – until Elizabeth was ‘outed’. Then, naturally, all hell broke loose. The paintings were withdrawn from circulation and Durack became something of a pariah in the world of Australian art. Elizabeth had adopted the persona of Eddy Burrup – an amalgamation of several Indigenous elders she admired – as a mark of respect. She wasn’t doing it for the money or to gain an elevated reputation. She did it out of respect.
I have used my training as an art historian to create the world in which Constance lived, from the lives of Australian women artists, born in the 1880s and who constituted the first generation of women permitted to undertake formal art training at the technical colleges of Sydney and Hobart.
I also draw on my experiences of ten years’ living in the French Alps. Because I have my heart in two places I write both into my fiction. Tis the Doing Not the Deed is set in the Hunter Valley of NSW, where I grew up, and the region of Annecy in Haute-Savoie France, where my present-day characters live – Apolline a headstrong French lawyer, and her mild-mannered Australian husband, Parry, an investigator for an art auction house.
‘Tis the doing not the deed follows Apolline and Parry as they negotiate their own lives while sorting out the provenance of paintings in a deceased estate before the paintings go to auction. WHAT IF the creator of these paintings is not who she/he is supposed to be?
While Parry is visiting his seriously ill mother in Australia, the mystery surrounding the art collection re-surfaces. Although Apolline has promised Parry not to risk her safety in trying to find the missing artworks, she is caught in a dangerous intrigue, leading to an explosive conclusion – in more ways than one!