Home Fires

By: Fiona Lowe

Narrated by: Rebecca Macauley

From the best-selling Australian author of Daughter of Mine and Birthright.

"Fiona Lowe's ability to create atmosphere and tension and real relationship dynamics is a gift." (Sally Hepworth, best-selling author of The Mother In Law)

"Absorbing." (The Townsville Eye)

When a lethal bushfire tore through Myrtle, nestled in Victoria's breathtaking Otway Ranges, the town's buildings - and the lives of its residents - were left as smoldering ash. For three women in particular, the fire fractured their lives and their relationships.

Eighteen months later, with the flurry of national attention long past, Myrtle stands restored, shiny and new. But is the outside polish just a veneer? Community stalwart Julie thinks tourism could bring back some financial stability to their little corner of the world and soon prods Claire, Bec, and Sophie into joining her group. But the scar tissue of trauma runs deep, and as each woman exposes her secrets and faces the damage that day wrought, a shocking truth will emerge that will shake the town to its newly rebuilt foundations....

With her sharp eye for human foibles, best-selling author Fiona Lowe writes an evocative tale of everyday people fighting for themselves, their families and their town - as only this distinctively Australian storyteller can.

©2019 Fiona Lowe (P)2019 HarperAudio

3.5 stars A Bit Too Much Sad Not Enough Glad

Although I think this book was well-written and well-crafted, it's not the best book to listen to if you don't handle trauma well or suffer from depression. In fact, the book includes websites where you can get help both if you've suffered from anything in the book or if reading the book itself has raised issues for you.
Home Fires mainly covers three different couples as they and their families recover from a devastating bush-fire that destroyed their town and their lives. It has placed significant strain on all three couples, and just about every marriage-related problem you can think of is covered, because in most cases, they had problems before the fires; sometimes severe ones.
For much of the book, it seems there's no joy in anything, although another couple comes in that seems okay ... at first. It was hard going because there seemed so much misery in everyone's lives and little joy. And while that's certainly a realistic scenario given what's happened, it made reading it painful and depressing at times.
Much of it is resolved by the end of the book. I won't say whether the resolutions are all positive or negative except to say that I think it's worth hanging in there to see what happens. The characters and the situations they find themselves in were definitely intriguing enough to make me invested in finding out how it all worked out.

Rebecca Macauley was excellent with the delivery of the book