The Drover's Wife

by Leah Purcell

Tarantino meets Deadwood in this full-throttle drama of our colonial past, written by the indomitable Leah Purcell. Henry Lawson’s story of the Drover’s Wife pits the stoic silhouette of a woman against the unforgiving Australian landscape, staring down a serpent – it’s our frontier myth captured in a few pages. In Leah’s new play the old story gets a very fresh rewrite. Once again the Drover’s Wife is confronted by a threat in her yard in Australia’s high country, but now it’s a man. He’s bleeding, he’s got secrets, and he’s black. She knows there’s a fugitive wanted for killing whites, and the district is thick with troopers, but something’s holding the Drover’s Wife back from turning this fella in a taut thriller of our pioneering past, this play is full of fury, power and has a black sting to the tail, reaching from our nation’s infancy into our complicated present. (7 male, 1 female).

Genres: Plays, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Australia, Historical, Theatre, Adult

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Leah Purcell is a multi-award-winning and self-made author, playwright, actor, director, filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and showrunner. At the heart of her work are female and First Nation themes, characters and issues. The Drover's Wife was first a play written by and starring Purcell, which premiered at Belvoir St Theatre in late 2016 and swept the board during the 2017 awards season, winning the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Playwriting and Book of the Year; the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Drama and the Victorian Prize for Literature; the Australian Writers' Guild Award for Best Stage Work, Major Work and the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre; the Helpmann Award for Best Play and Best New Australian Work; and the Sydney-UNESCO City of Film Award. The feature film adaptation of The Drover's Wife, written, directed and starring Leah Purcell, is slated for a 2020 release. Leah Purcell is a proud Goa, Gunggari, Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland.

(source: Amazon.au)

Reviews

[Kiran Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

" I don’t think Purcell is interested in answering it either. She, like many other great writers of a moral tradition, is interested in trying to represent life rather than evaluate it, and to give an artistic representation of a sort of dynamic that defines Australian culture, and yet is seldom represented in Australian literature."

- If you want to read more of my thoughts about Leah Purcell's wondrous writing, please check them out over at the Heavy Feather Review, at this link here: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2020/1...

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I recently had a kill – ‘

I read this play purely by chance: I’d asked for a copy of Leah Purcell’s new novel of the same name and received a copy of her earlier play. Intrigued, I read it through, finished it, and then reread Henry Lawson’s short story.

Yes, Ms Purcell’s play departs from the original story. There are more active characters: the antagonist in the Henry Lawson version becomes the hero in this. There are other changes, too. In the play, Molly (the Drover’s Wife) is participating more in events, not passively waiting. And some of the reader’s assumptions about power and relative strength are challenged as well.
For myself, the play challenges the euro-centric view I have based on my reading of Henry Lawson’s short story. And that, surely, is a good thing.

I found the play easy to follow: actions as described and words working together to create powerful images. And now I wait, patiently, to read Ms Purcell’s novel.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[David Searle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2020 I mistakenly reviewed the novel in this space and it is only now that I have read the playscript and am able to rectify the situation.

The script is sharp, thoughtful and engrossing. I would jump to see it on stage.
4.5 stars

The original revirw has been moved to the novel
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

[Kerri Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much thought provoking detail in such a compact play. Inspirational and creatively motivating. I would love to see this on stage as a follow up. Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant! All the reviews and recommendations that raved about this play and I am still blown away. Possibly one of the best Australian texts I've ever read.

[cherryyemilyy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4☆

I have read the original Drover’s Wife by Henry Lawson for another uni English class that I dropped after the census date. But I did find this play edition to be more accurate depiction of colonial Australia.

[Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Drover's Wife is a multi-layered novel that will have you captivated from the beginning. The story paints the setting of a hard life for Molly in the rugged, yet beautiful Snowy Mountains of colonial Australia.
I was drawn to the book based on Leah Purcell’s own engagement with Henry Lawson’s short story, ‘The Drover’s Wife”.
In telling the story we learn so much about Purcell’s lived experience of what it is to be a black woman traversing white Australia. It’s not autobiographical, yet there are strong themes that are significant in Purcell’s life.
On the surface, the story is simple with a mystery that unfolds. At a deeper more profound level
Leah Purcell uncovers the racism and social divides that underpin Australia’s land grab and dispossession of Indigenous people. She also portrays colonial Australia’s embedded poverty, itinerant work, violence, rural isolation and social snobbery.
Overall it is the exposure in her narrative of misogyny, sexual violence and women’s courage that also become a significant part of the story.
The conclusion kept me engaged right to the end.
This is an excellent book well worth reading.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this directly after reading the novel also by Leah Purcell.
Wish I'd seen the original production, would have been excellent with these actors.
It's an interesting to compare the different mediums. In some ways I think the play is more of brutal story and is certainly more in the moment without the rich internal dialogues and backstory in the novel. I found the novel far more hopeful and more of a complete story.
I hope this play has many opportunities to be performed and will be looking forward to seeing the film.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Drama 2017
Leah Purcell has adapted an Australian classic....
...and add a few new plot twists!

Review

[Stephie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid and tight re-imagining of the Henry Lawson short story. I really enjoyed Purcell's take on this and would love to see the play performed one day. I like the way she turned the wife from a passive to an active character and breathed life into Yadaka, who is merely a peripheral character in the original.

[Karolina]

Brutal, haunting, just spectacular. Blew me away.

[Marion Brownlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally confused until halfway through the book I realised that The Drover's wife was a white woman. She had black heritage . The fact that Leah portrayed The Drover's wife in this book just seems wrong. The major story is that this white woman unknowingly has a black history. So having Leah on the cover and in the movie is misleading. The only Saving Grace this book has is the fact that Leah failed English in school. So not a bad effort

[•Lilli•]

good god

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ✨
Play version

[Rachel Fegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I will not fall, I will not drop. I am a woman, a Ngarigo woman, so much more than a Drover’s wife.”

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm lost for words. This book should become a milestone of truth-telling of the brutality of the Australian frontier and the official but unacknowledged war against and dispossession of the Aborigines. A 'deadly' tale of richly developed characters and sub-plots. Books like this will progress Reconciliation, by helping us to understand the wrongs and making amends by being better.
https://australianstogether.org.au/di...

[B. Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leah Purcell has talent, no doubt, and has so been recognised. This reimagining of the Henry Lawson work can be commended in terms of plot, and the themes from long ago that continue to resonate today. Unfortunately, that is where it ends.
The writing does not evoke the time and place it seeks to take the reader, and hence the characters are not fleshed out.
Indeed, the prose seems disjointed. For example, it is not possible, in the 1890s, that a bush woman would think of her “hormones”, and it is unlikely that an Aboriginal man of that era would say to a white woman... “sorry for your loss...”
Credit here for the idea and much surrounding it but, as a novel, it doesn’t quite work.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed from my mother, it was a good story line and interesting how it unfolded but I got a bit confused with the timing of this. Some of the sentence structure towards the end, especially the way the POV chopped and changed was strange.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENGL120

I was filled with tension and anxiety the whole read through. Beautifully written and a harrowing representation of life for women and Indigenous Australians.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once a week in our school library we hold aBooks I Love book talk where one student and one staff member talks about a book they loved reading. An English teacher talked about The Drover's Wife last term and after her passionate recommendation, I knew I had to read it, and what a fabulous read it turned out to be!

Loosely based on Henry Lawson's short story, The Drover's Wife, this novel highlighted the hardship women faced in colonial Australia, especially in the High Country. Having visited the area recently, it was easy to image the beauty of this harsh land and the challenges Molly and her children faced on a daily basis. The descriptions of the snow gums were especially beautiful.

Molly Johnson was definitely a strong, no-nonsense, courageous woman who loved her children with the fierceness of a lioness. The relationship between her and her four living children was a highlight of the novel, although I felt sorry for twelve-year-old Danny who was the 'man' of the family while his father was away droving. His young shoulders had to carry too many burdens for his tender age.

The Drover's Wife was not a pleasant read. There was violence, rape, poverty, prejudice and injustices, and the ending was heartbreaking. However, it was a quick read as the plot moved at a cracking pace and once I started the first chapter, I found it difficult to put down until I had reached the last page. A compelling read.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written as a play, then a novella and now a major film, The Drover's Wife by Leah Purcell is an epic portrayal of a reimagined Henry Lawson poem. Published in 2019, the book begins in 1913 with Danny, Molly’s eldest child reminiscing on his childhood scrapbook. Moving back to 1893, the lyrical narrative tells the tale of Molly Johnson, the wife of an absent husband, away droving sheep. She has four children and the fifth is due any day now, yet she has to face various hardships while caring for her children alone in the bush. A formidable woman with indigenous heritage, Molly faces the challenges of her life with a steely determination and a calm demeanour. The hardships of late 19th-century rural pioneering existence are brilliantly illustrated, as are the issues of the treatment of First Nation peoples, women and the harsh reality of Australian bush survival. A masterpiece of Australian storytelling, from the talented Goa–Gunggari–Wakka Wakka Murri woman, that makes for a five stars must-read rating. The film shorts look spectacular and a brilliant delight awaits its viewing. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.

[Peter Langston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb story telling. The descriptions of place provide a vivid backdrop in which to image these rich and abundantly real characters. Story retelling of the early days of white depravity and disregard mostly lack the humanity of the characters reimagined. Purcell instead provides us with deeply flawed, exceptionally real characters who play out their mixture of courageous emotions on the landscape of the narrative in a way most Australian authors won’t allow. There is no high handed morality here because it would mar the telling and yet, her imperative to provide the broader, noble brush strokes, is still met. Bravo for a bolder, new level of Australian stories which can talk of horrors and cast deserved aspersions without condemnation for all and without losing site of making the the story rich in broader humanities.

[Dragonladymoi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers a lot of ground in a short time. It’s quite a leap as the writer provides the background for the merging of the the parties involved in the justice or lack of, for Molly, the Drover’s wife.

The story is that of a battered wife, abusive life for their children. Only Molly was there to help her and her children. No one was there for them in any real sense until Yadaka. The law did not protect them and found her to be guilty of the deaths of the men who abused her.

It’s a very sad tale. One that is repeated in many forms in many relationships to this day. Women and children are not protected from abuse by the ‘protection’ of the law.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible book. Set in outback Australia at the turn of the last century, it focuses around Molly Johnson, abused wife of a mostly absent drover and her children. It also follows a newly arrived couple and their son from England where he is to take over as the local sergeant and she is a passionate advocate for women’s rights. This complex novel tells of Australian history around indigenous people, white people and newly arrive British people. It tells of the racism, the lawlessness and the absolute rule of men over women. Narrated by the author, this book has massive impact when you hear each word read carefully and with such emotion. Brilliant book.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This truely is Leah Purcell’s poignant story about First Nations People and their struggle for survival under the backdrop of an unruly and unjust colonial rule. The play is set simply yet it’s explicit messaging is as clear as on the first page as it is on the last. I found this to be more interesting and incredibly moving compared to Purcell’s novelisation of her story. There is much more emotion and enough to really connect with the characters. If there was ever a more important Australian play it would be The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell.

[Pip Snort · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't seen the movie, but I now understand why it is rated MA. Telling this story without the ugly language and sexual detail would not have spoiled it or affected its powerful impact. While the modern feminist interlocutor was understandable, it was still anachronistically jarring. Still it was an engaging and moving account of frontier colonial life and another reminder of the deplorable and disappointing conduct of our forebears.

[Chris Klitzing · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book the meet fact that Molly cared for her kids so well in living conditions we can’t quite image from our modern life of comfort and security.
The appalling stance of the law that allowed women to have no recourse at all despite being raped and severely assaulted is unbelievable!!
And being Aboriginal in the time was no better in fact worse as being shot on sight was a common possibility.
Amazing story despite what I previously wrote
🫤🫤

[Dona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept seeing this book in shops, on Audible and out as a movie and since as I like historical fiction I finally succumbed to purchasing it from Audible. Then it took awhile to get into and wondered if I was going to like it even with all of the rave reviews. But finally I was hooked and enjoyed listening to the author read it. Now to watch the movie which was also written by the book’s author!

[David Dick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brutal and ugly, but some sweetness in the relationships between Yadaka, Molly and Danny. Depicts a cold, ugly world in fairly unflinching terms, but I felt detached from its world, at a remove that made connection to the events of the play and its themes of frontiers, racism, women, masculinity, and story telling difficult.

[Kellie Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a beauty! Based on Henry Lawson’s short story of the same name, it transports the reader back to colonial times, revisiting history whilst placing a strong focus on female characters and consideration for the indigenous perspective. Survival in early Australia was challenging for many and there is much to consider about the pursuit of justice whilst reading this novel.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Previewed this as a Year 11 text for school. Tough play but lots of stuff to work with. A really interesting take on the original Lawson short story. Lots of issues but not for the faint-hearted. Powerful drama!