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Walkabout Woman
LOST IN THE DREAMTIME
In the outback of modern-day Australia, there lies an almost forgotten land. It is a land as distant from our own as the surface of the moon -- and as alien. Here, Raba, a young Aborigine girl first enters the magical realm of the Dreamtime and learns something of its awesome power. But when she is "rescued" by a well-meaning missionary, Raba finds herself caught between two worlds -- with disastrous results. Now she must return to the Dreamtime to appease the wrath of the Ancestors and learn their deepest secrets -- secrets that can save both her and her tribe.
Vibrant, rich, and endlessly fascinating, Michaela Roessner's Walkabout Woman is a spellbinding novel of an old world full of new ideas -- and real magic.
In the outback of modern-day Australia, there lies an almost forgotten land. It is a land as distant from our own as the surface of the moon -- and as alien. Here, Raba, a young Aborigine girl first enters the magical realm of the Dreamtime and learns something of its awesome power. But when she is "rescued" by a well-meaning missionary, Raba finds herself caught between two worlds -- with disastrous results. Now she must return to the Dreamtime to appease the wrath of the Ancestors and learn their deepest secrets -- secrets that can save both her and her tribe.
Vibrant, rich, and endlessly fascinating, Michaela Roessner's Walkabout Woman is a spellbinding novel of an old world full of new ideas -- and real magic.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 1988
About the author
Michaela Roessner
13 books21 followersMichaela-Marie Roessner-Hermann is an American science-fiction writer publishing under the name Michaela Roessner.
Born in San Francisco, Michaela Roessner was raised in (successively) California, New York, Pennsylvania, Thailand, and Oregon. Trained as a visual artist, she holds a BFA in Ceramics from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA in Painting from Lone Mountain College, and exhibits under the name M. M. Roessner-Herman. In 1989, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Her first novel, Walkabout Woman, was a 1989 nominee for the Mythopoeic Award, and won the Crawford Award. She has also published the science fiction novel Vanishing Point and number of short stories, published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, SciFiction, Omni Online, Strange Plasma, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and elsewhere. She is also the author of two historical novels, The Stars Dispose (1997) and The Stars Compel (1999), about Catherine de Medici. She lives in southern California.
She has taught at the Clarion Workshop at Michigan State University and the Gotham Writers' Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 23, 2022
It took a lot to get into this book for me, it was a lot more abstract than I'm used to. It was put down once for around a month before I decided to pick this anomaly up again. Am I glad I did. It's a rare gem of a story lost in a sea of sand, it starts off abstract and very fantastical, with the reader having to suspend disbelief quite intensely for some time, then it drops into a development, rich relationships, and when you think the foe has been vanquished you realize there's still half a book left to be read! From the midpoint and onward things pick up to a break-neck pace, with characters doing things you don't expect, and a pace of frantic urgency only increasing with each page. Fantastic read. Djilbara was a favourite of mine, and it would have been so cool to read something like a prequel with just her story.
All in all, a great fantasy novel. Definitely recommend.
All in all, a great fantasy novel. Definitely recommend.
May 20, 2009
Actually, the author is Michaela Roessner.
August 11, 2016
Read this as a young teen, back when the fantasy/reality type books is what interested me most. Remember loving it.
June 2, 2012
Loved this story. I'd like to read more Dreamtime novels!
August 2, 2013
This is a great story of the outback coming of age and magic is in every step.
July 30, 2014
It's just a stellar book. The writing is amazing, the story unusual, and I found it hard to put it down.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews