Nigel Featherstone
My Heart is a Little Wild Thing
Ultimo Press, 2022
Blood is thicker than water, but the heart is a little wild thing that can’t be tamed.
The day after I tried to kill my mother, I tossed some clothes, a pair of hiking boots, a baseball cap and a few toiletries into my backpack, and left at dawn.
Patrick has always considered himself a good son. Willing to live his life to please his parents, his sense of duty paramount to his own desires and dreams. But as his mother’s health continues to deteriorate and his siblings remain absent, he finds the ties that bind him to his mother begin to chafe.
After an argument leads to a violent act he travels to a familiar country retreat to reflect on what his life could be – and through a chance encounter with a rare animal and an intriguing stranger starts to wonder if perhaps it is not too late to let his heart run wild.
A story about family, love and the cost of freedom, My Heart is a Little Wild Thing serves as a reminder that we all deserve to pursue our dreams.
“Epic in its intimacy... It’s a triumph of a book about the timeless theme of how romance can be obstructed by a suffocating mother.”
Bodies of Men
Hachette, 2019
Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian lieutenant at twenty-one, is face down in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate.
William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly. When the two are reunited, James is recovering from an accident, hidden away in the home of an unusual family - a family with secrets. Together they will risk it all to find answers.
Soon William and James are thrust headlong into territory more dangerous than either could have imagined.
Shortlisted for the 2020 ACT Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2019 Queensland Literary Awards - Fiction
Longlisted for the 2020 ARA Historical Novel Prize
2019 Canberra Critics Circle Award for literature
“a novel about intimacy and devotion, the power of tenderness, the mysteries of time, presence, and absence, secrets revealed and withheld, and friendships between strangers emerging from dire circumstances”
About the Author
Nigel Featherstone is an Australian writer who has been published widely. His works include the story collection Joy (2000), his debut novel Remnants (2005), and The Beach Volcano (2014), which is the third in a series of novellas. He wrote the libretto for The Weight of Light, a contemporary song cycle that had its world premiere in 2018. He has held residencies at Varuna (Blue Mountains), Bundanon (Shoalhaven River), and UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
He lives on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.
