T & L
Tristessa & Lucido
Published by University of Qld Press 2003
| Cover Design: Ellie Exarchos
Miriam Zolin has a succinct and deceptively simple way of voicing complex and profound aspects of the human condition. Lily Brett
ATHENA FAIRWEATHER can take your pain away. To those who experience her touch, it feels like a miracle. But hers is a healing gift that she fears and does not understand.
When this young Australian woman takes a job in Prospect, Nebraska, she discovers a temporary sanctuary from herself and an unlikely friendship with her neighbour ‘the Princess’.
It is only when Theney meets Aubrey, a jazz musician whose damaged soul is a reflection of her own, that she really begins to understand the gift we all have and how to use it.
Tristessa & Lucido is a haunting debut novel about modern love and old-fashioned faith.
“…vastly entertaining …Theney Fairweather is a great creation…” The Australian, 31 January 2004
“A gifted debut… Tristessa & Lucido is, emotionally and spiritually, a powerful little book and Zolin a beguiling writer.” The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 17 August 2003
“… one of those reads you don’t want to put down … well written and inspiring debut …” Good Reading, December 2003
“…a brave and skilled writer…” The Canberra Times, 27 August 2003
Bio from the front page:
| Photo: Bruce Hart
Miriam Zolin grew up in Melbourne and East Gippsland in Victoria and recently returned to Melbourne after spending eight years in the USA and Sydney.
Before, during and after studying linguistics, languages and literature at the University of New England in Armidale (in northern NSW), Miriam has had a varied working life, doing everything from marking lambs and washing dishes, through to nannying, managing a corporate intranet and running the offices of at least two pseudo-government organisations.
More recently, she has been developing a career as a technical writer and process analyst, creating user manuals and other documentation for business, computer software, networks and hardware. She keeps herself amused by scaring her managers in the corporate world with her insistence that some of her greatest works of fiction have the words User Manual on the front cover.
Miriam’s first novel Most Beloved was short-listed for the Australian Vogel Literary Award in 1992. She has had a number of articles published in magazines with subjects as varied as self-sufficiency lifestyles and jazz. Her short story ‘Between Come and Go’ was published in the 2001 University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Writers Anthology Small Suburban Crimes.