If you’re a ‘liker’ of my Facebook Page, you would have seen the post last month about discovering ‘Tangara’ by Nan Chauncy in a box of books my grandmother gave me.
I posted at the time:
So my grandmother was clearing out some books and gave me two boxes full! In amongst the treasures I discovered ‘Tangara’ by Nan Chauncy. What a wonderful tale – a young white girl comes across a band of Aborigines living in the wilds of the Great Western Tiers cir. 1960’s and makes friends with one of the Aboriginal girls!
Now I’m still only part way through, so no spoilers please (though I have a sneaking suspicion the Aborigines are ghosts?? Praying I’m wrong, but still a good story even if that turns out to be the case.)
Now I’m still not going to give away any spoilers as to whether my hunches were right or not, but safe to say this is a fantastic story. There’s something ageless about the writing, something easy-to-read about it despite the fact it was published in 1960, and I really appreciated reading about so many places familiar to me – the Great Western Tiers for instance, an impressive mountain range stretching across the north coast of Tasmania, not too far from where I live.
Growing up I thought there were no books set in Tasmania, I thought my dream to be a published author was perhaps a bit of a long shot. Perhaps if I’d discovered Nan Chauncy’s books earlier (she has several others based in Tasmania, including ‘Mathinna’s People’, and ‘Tiger in the Bush’), my dream might not have felt so unattainable for so long.
Heather Ewings 