He ends up unintentionally killing the aunt. A stranger intrudes and tries to learn the secret of how to obtain the ink. The third woman, Zoe, lives by the sea, where she and her aunt earn a living milking squid and selling the valuable ink. Ren’s character may remind readers of Ayla in Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear, another savvy survivalist. To survive, she flees to a mountain cave, where she stays alive by hunting, trapping, and trading pelts. We next meet Ren, whose life was ruined and whose son was conscripted by the marauding military resistance. The boy is found with his eyes plucked out, the drought returns, and the farmer’s prosperity reverts to penury. This woman alone enjoys great prosperity until a jealous neighbor’s boy tries to kill the heron. She is saved when the ethereal bird appears to end the dry spell and become her protector. Only briefly do we meet the first, a farmer whose land and livelihood are ruined by drought.

Sharing this tale with the bird are three curiously engaging women. That “struggle” is left to the imagination of the reader, as is much of the storyline, throughout which obfuscation, minimalism, and a creative timeline are mixed with some beautifully honed prose. It’s unclear what the military hopes to do with the bird, but perhaps the heron’s preternatural powers might give them an edge in their struggle. Its apparent magic becomes the subject of a deadly hunt by soldiers involved in a local uprising. The heron is incorporeal, made of water, though it can be netted and caged. The chapters are very loosely tied to a mythical bird whose appearance reverses a devastating drought in an unidentified rural land. Robbie Arnott is a prize-winning Tasmanian writer who has created in The Rain Heron a phantasmagoric tale in five parts.

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott