Root Leaf Flower Fruit *Ockham 2024 Shortlist*

A woman lies helpless after a stroke, her family gathered. Her grandson, healing slowly from a head injury after coming off his bike, takes leave from his job and family to prepare her rundown house and farm for sale. As he works, he sifts through what remains of his grandmother's daily life. Then, after an auction result for which he was not prepared, and echoing her desperate flight years earlier, his uncertain return leads to a haunting and unguessable destination. Root Leaf Flower Fruit is a verse novel about slow time - the turning of the seasons, the farming of land, the generations of a family - and about sudden, devastating interruptions. 'This book kept surprising me. I loved its fascination with the body's sleights of hand, and the careful attention it paid to childhood, memory and other buried things.' -Anna Smaill, author of The Chimes and Bird Life