My Debut Novel

My first novel, Lily Campbell’s Secret, was published by Rightword Enterprises in 2019.

Lily Campbell’s Secret

It’s 1913, and Lily’s comfortable middle-class Melbourne life is completely upended when she falls in love. As she sits in the hall of her private school, portraits of past headmistresses frowning at her, she realises the ‘glaring, unalterable fact’ that she is pregnant, the father a young stablehand called Bert. Her parents disown her: the first of many wrenching challenges she must face. She marries Bert and they have a few happy months together in rural Woodend, where their daughter is born. When the war starts, Bert volunteers and Lily is thrown very much on her own resources. After Bert returns home, Lily has to face the most momentous decision of her life.

Lily’s role as mother, musician, wife and lover, leads her to confront issues of patriarchy, nationalism, love… and the value of a human life.

In Jennifer Bryce’s ‘Australian Gothic’ novel, the suppressed grand passions of her long-suffering heroine are finally resolved in a way that is both shocking and completely natural.

— Irina Dunn, Director, Australian Writers’ Network

Original and compelling. A vivid sense of period; a breathtaking finale.

—Virginia Duigan

Here’s the cover, designed by David Grigg. It’s based on paintings by John Barker and Arthur Streeton.

Sorrowing woman leaning on table in front of photo of her husband