Glenda
Kirkby
AUTHOR OF TWO RIVERS
Meet Glenda Kirkby and discover Two Rivers,
a powerful historical novel of courage, resilience, and life in colonial Western Australia.
I stood beside my great grandmother’s grave in Kalgoorlie cemetery knowing that with three small children she had followed her husband to the goldrush back in 1894. The word that came to mind was ‘tough’ and I wondered how I would have managed as a pioneer woman. This started me on the path to writing Two Rivers, which apart from being an historical novel of Western Australia, a comparatively rare thing, it is an exploration of the challenges and lives of pioneer women.
Western Australia is my home. I love the dry, hard climate of the inland, the majestic and mysterious Kimberley, the roiling storm-tossed waves of the south coast and the peaceful, religious sensation of the towering forests. I want to share these places with my readers.
Come with me first to Two Rivers, a fictional farm south of the inland town of York where the settlers are newcomers or first-generation colonials. The land challenges them all and the women must fight with every fibre to make their own path and determine their own future.
This is the story of one of them.
SHE CAN TAME WILD HORSES.
BUT CAN SHE SURVIVE THE MAN SHE MARRIED?
Two Rivers
Amelia McDonald has spent her life defying convention. Gifted with an uncanny bond with horses and born to the harsh beauty of the York district, she dreams of building a future on the land she loves.
But when she marries the ambitious Englishman Bartholomew Roberts, Amelia discovers that her husband values only two things, her inheritance and the heir she might provide. Trapped in a world where a wife has few rights and fewer protections, she finds herself fighting her farm, her freedom, and her very survival.
As Bartholomew’s cruelty deepens, an unexpected ally enters her life, James Pollock, a transported convict haunted by a terrible past. Branded a murderer and shunned by society, he may be the only man willing to stand beside her when everything she holds dear is threatened.
Set against the rugged frontier of colonial Western Australia, Two Rivers is a sweeping historical novel of courage, resilience, forbidden friendship, and a woman’s deamination to claim her own destiny.
In a land that belongs to men, one woman will fight for what is hers.
