Jessie Cole

Deeper Water delivers on its title’s promise of immersion, sensuality, and the liminal. Narrated by Mema, an innocent twenty-two-year-old living on an isolated rural property, the book opens with the arrival of Hamish, a city sophisticate whose car has been washed down a flooding creek. Mema saves Hamish from drowning and takes him into her family home until the floodwater recedes. He soon becomes a catalyst for Mema’s sexual awakening and for her widening understanding of her place in the world.

‘I don’t mind all the broken things – sometimes I shift a chair outside when I think the house is overflowing, or when I can’t get to the kitchen cupboard or something – it’s the people that bother me. My dad collects broken people too.’