The Silence of Water

When Fan’s mum, Agnes, announces the family is moving to Western Australia to take care of Agnes’s father—a man they’ve never spoken of before now—Fan finds herself a stranger in a new town living in a home whose currents and tensions she cannot read or understand. Resentful of her mother’s decision to move, Fan forms an alliance with her grandfather, Edwin Salt, a convict transported to Australia in 1861. As she listens to memories of his former life in England, Fan starts snooping around the house, riffling through Edwin’s belongings in an attempt to fill the gaps in his stories. But the secrets Fan uncovers will test the family’s fragile bonds forever, and force Edwin into a final reckoning with the brutality of his past.

Sharron Booth was born in Yorkshire, England and emigrated to Western Australia as a child with her family in the 1970s. She has worked as a professional writer for more than 25 years. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and her creative work has been published in Southerly, LiNQ, The Australian and broadcast on ABC Radio. Her first novel, The Silence of Water, was shortlisted for the 2020 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for an unpublished manuscript. Sharron lives near the river in Perth and when not writing, she enjoys yoga, the beach, the local live music scene and watching cricket.