Hopetoun Wives

Hopetoun Wives

Three different women- each with their own problems- follow their husbands to the remote and troubled Jerdacuttup Mine in Western Australia, uncovering a world of secrets, infidelity, infertility and failed marriages.

In Hopetoun, The Jerdacuttup Mine is attracting families form all around the globe with the promise of making them millions. It's a beautifully rugged beachside town, but the developers can't keep up. For the wives and children of the hardworking miners, adjusting to life here is one hell of a culture shock.

Hopetoun Wives follows the story of three women, Jasmine, Miranda and Brigid who are drawn together in friendship. City-slicker Jasmine is desperately unhappy in her marriage, Miranda, the mine-managers wife, is fighting to be her own person- even if it means adopting a cause that could ruin the mine. And Brigid is struggling to keep her family afloat and hide her husband's crippling debts from the rest of the town.

For a while it seems these women have stumbled across a place that can heal them but the stronger they become together, the more their marriages seem destined to fall apart.

Fran Cusworth is an author and freelance journalist who has written for The Age, Herald Sun and The Australian. She moved to Hopetoun, a small town in Western Australia to work for a year, together with her husband and two children, before retuning to Melbourne in 2008. Fran survived the culture shock of moving from inner city Melbourne to remote mining town, fell in love with the wild beauty of the south west coast, and became immersed in a community miners, farmers, fishermen and migrants. Her first novel The Love Child was published in 2006.

Hopetoun Wives
Penguin
Author: Fran Cusworth
Price: $32.95