Bone Memories

2023 Longlist

This third novel from acclaimed Queensland author Sally Piper focuses on the repercussions, within one family, of a terrible crime. Even though sixteen years have passed, Billie will never recover from the murder of her daughter, Jess, and clings to her memory — and the site of her death — like a life raft. Daniel, who was a toddler when his mother was killed, can recall little of what happened but knows if he’s to have any chance of a better future he needs to move on from that defining event – if only his grandmother would let him. Meanwhile Daniel’s stepmother, Carla, also feels trapped by Jess’s legacy but has a plan that she believes will help everyone to escape from the long shadow of the past. Deeply human, evocative and beautifully written, Bone Memories explores themes of human connection and the memorialisation of place.

About the Author:

Sally Piper lives and works in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia. She is a former nurse and nurse educator, specialising in neurosurgical critical care, and has worked in both Australia and the UK. Her long nursing career taught her much about the vulnerabilities of people, but also the fortitude of those faced with extreme adversity. It is a career that continues to inform her writing, most notably when developing strengths, flaws and frailties in her characters.

Her debut novel Grace’s Table (UQP 2014/Legend Press UK 2019) was shortlisted for the 2011 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award – Emerging Queensland Author category and in 2013 she was awarded a Varuna Publishing Fellowship for her manuscript. Her second novel The Geography of Friendship (UQP 2018/Audible Audiobooks/Legend Press UK 2019) was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards – Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year category and selected as an Australian Women’s Weekly Great Read.

Bone Memories, Sally’s third novel, was published by University of Queensland Press in June 2022.

Her short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in various online and print publications in Australia, the UK and Ireland, to include a prize-winning short story in an anthology, Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Weekend Australian and other literary magazines and journals. She has been interviewed for radio, been a guest panelist at literary festivals and delivered many author talks and readings.

She is a self-confessed nature nerd and likes nothing more than long bush walks to escape her desk.

Nominating Library’s Comments:

Bone Memories is a brilliant and devastating novel about a mother’s grief for her lost daughter, Jess, and a son’s grief about losing his mother. It begins sixteen years after Jess’s murder, with the victim’s family continuing to grapple with the lives they face ahead and their memories of her. The novel is set in Queensland and is written by Brisbane-based author Sally Piper. – State Library of Queensland Australia