The Rain Heron

A gripping novel of myth, environment, adventure, and an unlikely friendship, from an award-winning Australian author. Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup d'état. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting, farming, trading, and forgetting the contours of what was once a normal life.

But her quiet stability is disrupted when an army unit, led by a young female soldier, comes to the mountains on government orders in search of a legendary creature called the rain herona mythical, dangerous, form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather. Ren insists that the bird is simply a story, yet the soldier will not be deterred, forcing them both into a gruelling quest. Spellbinding and immersive, Robbie Arnotts The Rain Heron is an astounding, mythical exploration of human resilience, female friendship, and humankinds precarious relationship to nature.

As Ren and the soldier hunt for the heron, a bond between them forms, and the painful details of Rens former life emergea life punctuated by loss, trauma, and a second, equally magical and dangerous creature. Slowly, Ren's and the soldiers lives entwine, unravel, and ultimately erupt in a masterfully crafted ending in which both women are forced to confront their biggest fearsand regrets. Robbie Arnott, one of Australias most acclaimed young novelists, sews magic into reality with a steady, confident hand.

Bubbling with rare imagination and ambition, The Rain Heron is an emotionally charged and dazzling novel, one that asks timely yet eternal questions about environment, friendship, nationality, and the myths that bind us. A Macmillan Audio production from FSG Originals

Arnott is the author of the novel Flames, which won the Margaret Scott Prize, was short-listed for the Victorian Premiers Literary Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 2019, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. He lives in Tasmania.