Archie's Daughter ebook | Jane Seaford | 9780987373618

Archie's Daughter is a mainstream fiction novel about families and mental illness. It is the uncertain story of Sally, her marriage to Johnny, and her father, Archie, who hid the truth of her mother's death from her. Eventually she decides to find out what really happened to her mother, aided by Johnny and her two brothers. This is Sally's story, searching to understand her apparently absent mother, her father's lies, how to survive and pursue relationships when life seems engineered and pre-set to undermine and destroy. Archie's Daughter is a well-considered work of depth, to be enjoyed and empathised with its complexity and beauty.

After years of academic writing, technical writing and a bout of freelance journalism, Jane laboured for months over her first short story. In spite of – or maybe even because of – all that effort, the piece, Jane decided, had failed. Nonetheless, having discovered the pleasures of creating stuff, she has since then been frenetically writing fiction. Several of her short stories have been placed, highly commended or short-listed in international competitions. Many have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand; others have appeared in anthologies or magazines. She also writes novels; ‘Archie’s Daughter’ is the first to appear in public.