While she was writing her novel, Angela Malone pinned a panorama photo of Hill End, the small NSW goldmining town, over the window near her desk. The photo seemed empty of life until Malone took to it with a magnifying glass and – as authors do – playing the giant game, discovered shadowy traces of some of her characters. No wonder, since the town lies on a bed of quartz which common wisdom invests with certain powers of invocation, much like the magic of the silver particles of photography. Hill End became the novel’s Reedy Creek, a place infinitely embroidered with the history and folklore of its predominantly Irish community.

The image on the cover is of a large hand cradling a small violin. This inversion introduces us to the free play of dreams, childhood, or folklore. The work offers an abundance of peeping through fingers, hair ribbon tied to branches, or dandelions blown to the wind for wishes to come true, of giants reaching through tiny windows as a child might reach into a doll’s house, or a dreamer into the past. Lots of hair, velvet, cutting and sewing, and tape measures, of mesmeric sensuality built into domestic work routines. Lots of sneaking around, keeping secrets, being discovered. There’s even a heroic horse called Biddy Silver to round off this girl’s-own universe.