Chatting With Sherri welcomes author Karen Viggers!

Karen is the award-winning, internationally best-selling author of four novels (Allen&Unwin): The Stranding (2008), The Lightkeeper’s Wife (2011), The Grass Castle (2014) and The Orchardist’s Daughter (2019). Karen is a wildlife veterinarian, biologist and researcher with a PhD in wildlife health, and she has worked with native animals in many remote parts of Australia from the Kimberley to Antarctica – bringing a unique set of perspectives to Australian contemporary literary fiction. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Romanian, Norwegian, Croatian and Dutch. In 2016, The Lightkeeper’s Wife/La Mémoire des embruns was published to acclaim in France (Les Escales, le Livre de poche 2016), winning the Les Petits Mots des libraires award 2016 for a discovery novel (Roman Decouverte) and short-listed for the Livre de poche Reader’s Choice Award. 

Sixteen-year old Mikaela has grown up isolated and home-schooled on an apple orchard in south-eastern Tasmania, until an unexpected event shatters her family. Eighteen months later she and her older brother Kurt are running a small business in a timber town. Miki longs to make connections and spend more time in her beloved forest, but she is kept a virtual prisoner by Kurt. When Miki meets Leon, another outsider, things slowly begin to change. But the power to stand up for yourself must come from within. And Miki must fight to uncover the truth of her past and discover her strength and spirit.