Sewing Moonlight – my first novel for adults
Here’s what people are saying:
“An utterly captivating story of determination in the face of prejudice and the struggle to escape the stranglehold of the past. Moving and compelling, with a heart as vast as a Central Otago sky.” Catherine Chidgey
“A heart-warming and heart-rending tale . . . the narrative unspools gently and lyrically to reveal the lives of a refreshingly original, richly-imagined cast of characters.” Fiona Sussman
“. . . this is a compelling story of lives blighted by secrets and expectations . . . yet it also celebrates the ability of the human spirit to endure and find solace within the natural world.” Maxine Alterio
In the winter of 1928, when 24-year-old German man Wilhelm Erdinger is left stranded in the remote New Zealand village of Falters Mill, he accepts his fate with the same shrugging stoicism he accepts everything else. And his fatalism is, at first, well rewarded. He purchases a piece of land capable of providing the kind of sustainable, self-sufficient life he craves, and a shack he soon begins to call home.
Though he is regarded with suspicion by many in the local community, he soon attracts a small number of friends, each outsiders in their own way. Euphemia, a retired opera singer whose own life is haunted by past decisions. Ernst, an eccentric professor whose real motives for being there are as elusive as the takahē he claims still exist in the hills. Sandy, second son of the wealthy landowners the Ballantynes, who shares Wilhelm’s doubts about the future of farming industrialisation. And Effie Ballantyne, who, as a child, forms a fairy-tale idolisation of Wilhelm when he attempts to treat her childhood polio.
With a little help from the ecological theories of Rudolf Steiner and the poetic inspiration of Goethe, Wilhelm survives, at times even flourishing, in a country rocked by the effects of war and the Depression. However, it is the imminent arrival of a new war ― coupled with the sometimes-brutal climate of Central Otago ― that will threaten to destroy the utopia he has created.
SEWING MOONLIGHT is a tragic tale of love, loss and biodynamics in a challenging time. More than this, it is a story of one man’s journey from alienation to acceptance. Like the moon, which looms large over everything, each ending is also a new beginning.
Faking it – My life in transition
“While there are huge rewards in the freedom and authenticity, Mewburn feels post-transition, she bluntly admits, “Being trans is often a bitch.” There’s the shock of encountering sexism and misogyny firsthand, as well as episodes of transphobia – some stemming from ignorance, others from a more sinister intent to hurt. While these are, thankfully, less common for Mewburn than are the many expressions of empathy, they’re a reminder of the distress and harm that limiting concepts of gender continue to cause.
Ultimately, this brave and revealing story asserts that no life should be constrained by lazy, simplistic binaries. When no one has to fake it – when everyone can be real, complex, and contradictory – we are all of us the better for it.”
Reviewed by Renata Hopkins in Kete Books