WHAT BOOK would novelist Heather Morris take to a desert island?

 . . . are you reading now?

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline. I am halfway through this extraordinary novel which is written by an American and set in 19th-century Australia.

As an Australian, I was intrigued by an American writing about the settling and colonising of Australia with the concerns being expressed here about ‘outsiders’ writing about indigenous history.

To her credit, Christina’s level of research into characters, place and time to tell a powerful story of suffering and survival in an historical fiction is masterful.

Christina weaves together the stories of a young pregnant woman and a teenage girl transported from England to the end of the earth with a young Aboriginal girl taken from her people to be brought up as an English girl.

The beauty and brutality of Australian history narrated through the lives of these girls is wonderfully told.

. . . would you take to a desert island?

Sole Survivor by Derek Hansen. Quite possibly the book I have returned to the most. It tells the story of a young doctor, Rosie, who inherits a shack on an isolated island off the coast of New Zealand. There she finds her only neighbours are a war-traumatised PoW and a retired policeman. All three are running away, hiding, from their past lives. They must navigate their relationships and their place on the island.

An extraordinary story of survival against the elements and their own demons, and of the love they share for their environment and ultimately each other.

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

The Encyclopedia Britannica. Living in rural New Zealand what I considered a dull, boring life, the volumes of the encyclopedia allowed me to escape to the faraway lands and cultures that I considered exotic and wanted to be a part of.

They allowed me to travel in my head, and in my bed and have the adventures I so craved away from my life of brothers and cows.

I gave farm animals the colourful names of places and people only I could pronounce and, when asked, proudly named the country they came from.

My thirst for knowledge was born and could only be satiated by reading.

. . . left you cold?

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili. This is a tough one to answer. But if I must . . . Not sure if it was the challenge of 933 pages, or the weight in my hands that made this epic tale hard for me to stay with and finish.

Set in the early 1900s Russian Empire, it is the story of seven women, revolution, liberation and a secret hot chocolate recipe. I will try again when time permits and when I have it on e-book. 

Stories of Hope: Finding Inspiration In Everyday Lives by Heather Morris is out now (Manilla Press, £14.99).