Queen of rural romance Rachael Treasure brings #MeToo to the land in new book White Horses
Returning to the spotlight after a messy divorce, Australian author Rachael Treasure has a new mission to help women and men smashed by our current culture — and look after our planet.
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She’s known as Australia’s queen of rural romance — but after a five-year gap to deal with a personal upheaval, Rachael Treasure is back with a new sense of purpose as she moves into the space of big sweeping dramas with new novel White Horses. Today she discusses bringing #MeToo to the land in the Sunday Book Club ten.
1. Rachael, tell us a bit about your new book White Horses?
It’s a coming-of-age, getting-of-wisdom story about 21-year-old “Drift” Wood whose mother disappeared when Drift was little. Raised by her father, an itinerant stockman, Drift’s education comes from the land and the women who blow into her life.
2. What was your inspiration for the book?
There’s a direct correlation between the treatment of Mother Earth and the treatment of women. In White Horses I explore how we can transcend our current food production systems that are violent towards the planet, and how, as women, we can find our inner wisdom. In doing so we build a healthier future for the land and ourselves.
3. It’s been five years since your last book … why the wait?
I was recovering from losing my childhood farm to a divorce that saw the kids and I without a home. I began White Horses in a rental property but put it aside to write my memoir Down the Dirt Roads. From that writing process I healed my past and rebuilt my life. When I took White Horses up again a whole new, beautiful version emerged! It was worth the wait!
4. White Horses blends your ‘day job’ — regenerative agriculture — with your love of fabulous, female-led fiction. How did you manage to weave the two together?
I am passionate about storytelling that inspires people to treat our land and each other with reverence, and passionate about farming that builds ecological health. I start my day lit up by my work. I now have an extremely supportive partner in Daniel who is equally committed to healing our farmland.
5. There’s also a strong #MeToo theme throughout the book, why did you feel you wanted to tackle that subject?
I limited life because of unconscious childhood programmed beliefs that conditioned me to believe I was less because of my gender. I blamed myself for past abuses. I wanted White Horses to heal women and for them to see their full feminine power of nourishment and nurturing. My male characters show that gentle, kind, sensitive men are also suffering under the current competitive, materialistic, patriarchal culture.
6. The landscape plays such an important role in the book; why did you choose to set White Horses in Western Australia?
I’ve had a “reef’n’beef” upbringing being a Tasmanian and love farmland that meets the sea. I needed a place that was remote and isolated enough so Drift grows up without the influence of technology. The West had that vastness.
7. When you’re writing, are you a plotter or a pants-er? That is, do you carefully plot out your stories before you start writing, or do you like to start writing with an idea, a character or a scene and then see where the story takes you?
A bit of both. I find non-fiction books that fascinate me and deepen my understanding of life, then weave what I learn into my stories. White Horses was hung on a book about the feminine Native American teachings from each moon and an Hawaiian book about honour in sexual coupling. Then my characters arrive and take me away with them.
8. This is your seventh novel, does the process of writing a novel get easier?
No, it certainly doesn’t! But my understanding of self has — I’ve studied the work of neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, amongst others, and I now understand brain wave states … so I can let the creative process flow and stop my ego getting in the way.
9. Which books are in your To Be Read pile right now?
2040 by Damon Gameau, On Eating Meat by Matthew Evans, The Sparkle Pages by Meg Bignell and Just One Wish by Rachael Johns.
10. You’re about to hit the road to meet readers all over Australia — what’s your favourite thing about book tours?
I get to meet men and women from my rural world, who are just like me; and catch up with my farming friends, who I have all over the countryside. I also get to wear clean clothes consistently and don’t get chook poop on my boots which seems to happen a lot when I’m at home!
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A note for our NSW readers: You can meet Rachael Treasure on 16th September at QBD Bondi from 12-1pm or at Anna’s Shop Around the Corner in Cronulla from 6pm. For full tour details visit rachaeltreasure.com
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Now for something a bit different. Our Book of the Month is The Collaborator, a novel based on an extraordinary true story set between WW2 Europe and modern-day Australia, by child Holocaust survivor Diane Armstrong.
To get a copy for a 30 per cent discount go to Booktopia and use the code NCBT19; and tell us what you think at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.
Originally published as Queen of rural romance Rachael Treasure brings #MeToo to the land in new book White Horses
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