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Susannah Begbie grew up in rural New South Wales on a sheep farm and is now a GP who has worked all over Australia. She is the winner of Hachette's Richell Prize for 2022.  The Deed is her first novel.
Tom Edwards has spent most of his life running the farm by himself. He’s not well pleased that his kids never came back to take their place on the land as he wanted.
Tom’s also dying and so he’s come up with a plan.
His kids will return to the farm and build him a coffin, in four days no less. They build him a coffin and they’ll do it right, or he’ll disinherit the lot of them.  
Jenny is the first back to Ellersly. She never really left the area and is the one to find Tom’s body. Christine is reliably prompt, Dave hurries because as the only son he thinks he’s getting it all and Sophie gets there, as she always does in her own time.
The conditions on Tom’s will at first puzzle then infuriate the siblings. Worse, the local lawyer stands to benefit from their disorganization and works to sow confusion in the ranks.
The Deed is a tremendous family drama that variously shocks, delights and intrigues the reader with the machinations of the town of Coorong.
The novel is told from the varying and contradictory points of view of the four Edwards siblings and their father Tom. Tom’s view is hard bitten and uncompromising. He feels he never got any favours and so he’s not about to start handing them out himself. 
As we flit between each of the children we see what this has meant through their lives. Jenny as eldest feels almost invisible and just wants someone who can see her for herself. Dave’s role as the only son ultimately drove him away from the pressure. Christine feels noone ever appreciated her work keeping everything together, a role she’s continued in her own family. And Sophie as youngest always tried to keep Tom smiling and perhaps never learned that she could be serious.
The interplay of the siblings and the obvious tension arising from the reading of the will lights the fuse that plays out in a kind of battle between allies. As readers we are poised to choose sides but ultimately root for the four to come together and overcome. It’s an interesting tension and hard to escape that for many people managing wealth transfer following the death of a parent is a macabre journey into bitterness and avarice.
The conceit of building the coffin is brilliantly set to allow us to discover something of the landscape around Ellersly. For mine I had no idea about how this might be achieved and still imagine a rough hewn box not unlike the pencil boxes we all made at school writ large. The journey itself is set up to trouble the power dynamics and drive forward the characters.
The Deed is a strange journey that is carried by the strength of its characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the pacing and energy of the narrative opening up parts of greater Australian life outside of my day to day. 
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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Donna M Cameron is a novelist and an award-winning playwright and short film writer. Her new novel is The Rewilding.
Jagger Eckerman is the office joke. As son of the billionaire boss everyone knows he’s a nepo baby with no real role in the company. But even nepo babies can tantrum and that’s what happens when Jagger realises he’s being used as the fall guy for the company's dodgy dealings.
Blowing the whistle was easy but Jagger wasn’t prepared for what comes next. Now he’s stuck in a cave hiding out from a hitman and firmly in the sights of a climate activist who already called that cave home!
Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Ernest Price is a transgender man working as a secondary English teacher in Naarm/Melbourne. His writing has been published by Queerstories and Overland.
The Pyramid of Needs is his first novel.
Linda is about to hit the big time. The fact that there aren’t a lot of seventy year olds going viral just means it will be even more sensational when she does, and viral clicks can't help but lead to more sales of her Supreme Self Supplements.
Jack is living his best life as a teacher in Naarm/Melbourne. Or at least he’s trying to when his older sister Alice gives him a call. Their mother has taken a fall while live streaming at their home in Noosa.
Jack hasn’t spoken to Linda since he came out as a trans man more than ten years ago. Alice can talk to him about regret, but why does he have to put himself at risk for the family who rejected him?


Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
Want more great conversations with Australian authors?
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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Yumna Kassab is the author of  novels including Australiana and The Lovers. Her writing has been listed for prizes including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and The Stella Prize. 
Yumna Kassab is also Parramatta’s first laureate in literature
In Politica the reader is transported to conflict engulfing a country. Through glimpses of ordinary life and revolutionary struggle we are shown the cost of war on a people and the tenacity, the fierceness of will required to carry on.
Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople
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The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.
These are the stories that make us who we are.
Miranda Darling is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. She has published both fiction and nonfiction; Thunderhead is her fifth book.
Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…
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Miranda is a writer, poet, and co-founder of Vanishing Pictures. Her latest novel is Thunderhead.
Across a single day we are thrown into the life of Winona Dalloway. From the moment she wakes, stealing a few precious moments before her time is not her own, to the dinner party that looms over her calendar, the reader follows Winona as she tries simply to be herself…
Stepping out into the streets of Sydney, Winona has her lists and her responsibilities, all punctuated by the incessant buzzing of texts and reminders from her husband lest she stray from the day’s purpose. 
Winona wonders, perhaps suspects that she is looking at the world differently to everyone else. That might explain how they seem to navigate it so effortlessly while she only manages to muddle through.
The Thunderhead of the title looms large over the narrative, threatening to burst, drenching the fragile balance of Winona’s life.
Winona Dalloway is a wonderfully original character for the sharpness of her insights and the myriad of voices she offers on the minutiae of her day to day.
Throughout the novel the reader is confronted, as is Winona, by the specter of mental health. Within the novel it is both the reality of Winona’s experience of the world and a cudgel used to beat her into some semblance of the everyday. As we travel alongside Winona it becomes apparent that the way she looks at the world is not the problem so much as the voices that tell her she needs to be other or more than they perceive her to be.
Within the world of Thunderhead Winona is in fact a guiding light and even as we shift back and forth between her contradictory views of the world, we are certain that her fresh take on the everyday must be more wonderful than simply blindly living it.
There is a lyricism to Darling’s rendering of the inner world of Winona. Images float in and out of view as she encounters her world both as its surface and its potential.
We are introduced to the Transcendence Project; Winona’s search, perhaps striving to make an authentic connection with another person. Something that could lift them both out of the humdrum and confirm that there is a point to this existence.
As the day passes and Winona moves toward the inevitable, we learn that she is not simply one person struggling with the pressures of her world. Winona is subject to something more sinister, something threatening to strip her of her very essence.
But… I’ve said too much.
Thunderhead is a tremendous evocation of life lived on the edge of a threatened if perhaps not enacted violence. A study in control and escape that offers the reader a glimpse into a world of expectation imposed and shattered.