The Raven and the Kookaburra
D.G. Reed
Type: Beta project
Genre: Historical fiction, mystery, literary
Word count: 119,000
Warnings: Graphic violence, swearing
Framed by a forged name, illiterate labourer Job Hatherell is condemned to exile in Australia. His wife, Ann, struggles against a rising tide of shame, trapped by a cruel dependence. Over thirty years of the Victorian Age, their lives mirror the same question: why were they torn apart—and what remains after so much has been taken?
A single letter. A forged name. A life broken beyond repair.
In 1830, a forged “Swing” letter condemns illiterate labourer Job Hatherell to transportation. Thrust into the brutality of prison hulks and Australian penal colonies. Job must remake himself to survive, carrying his wife’s memory across the ocean. In Wiltshire, Ann faces a quieter, punishing form of exile. Desperate for shelter, she accepts support from a man whose initial kindness quickly tightens into a snare of dependence. Also battling poverty and shame, she fights to keep her children from the workhouse. Spanning nearly thirty years, the novel moves between the ravens circling English fields and the mocking kookaburra in the Australian bush. Their stories echo one another in grief, endurance, and the fragile persistence of hope, leaving them haunted by the same unanswered question: Why?
This is my first completed novel, born from a lifelong passion for historical storytelling. Profoundly deaf since birth, I channelled my experience of silence and endurance into The Raven and The Kookaburra—a story about the long fight for one’s voice against systemic injustice. I live in the New Forest, England, finding inspiration in the land and pursuits like vegetable gardening and researching 19th-century family history. This novel is deeply rooted in the social shadows of the past, exploring how a single lie can echo across decades and continents. It is, above all, a labour of love.
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