Dear Reader,

It’s been twelve years since I wrote the first draft of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in 2014. Although I mostly managed the terror of writing it by convincing myself that no one would ever read it, there were still days at my desk when I couldn’t fool myself: I wanted this story to find its kin. I was driven by a deep, aching desire for connection. To use my voice. To roar the way I used to on childhood bushwalks, yelling the Dharug word cooee into the Australian bush, waiting with breath held to hear someone unknown and unseen, but on the same track, call cooee back. I’m here. You’re not alone. That’s what I hoped to feel in my writing; it’s what I hoped Alice and her story might offer others. But those hopes often felt so fragile that I could barely acknowledge them.

What’s happened since then has been anything but fragile.

This story has travelled further than I could have ever imagined, gathering generosity, connection, creativity, joy and courage along the way. Readers have shown me again and again what a book can become once it leaves a writer’s hands, how it can change lives. Maybe you’re one of those readers. You’ve written to me about your loves, longings, joys, scars and hopes. About grief, and fears carried and let go. About flowers, firestorms, lost homes, found homes and the slow work of returning to yourself. You’ve told me where you were in your life when Alice found you, and where you’ve taken her. And you’ve told me all the things she has given you: hope, courage, inspiration, kinship. In telling me these things, you haven’t only changed what this book means to me, you’ve changed my life.

I wrote Lost Flowers because I needed to know if I could honour the stories inside me, calling to my soul to be written, even while I was terrified of writing them. I didn’t know then how vividly and powerfully that story in me could be brought alive by being read. Now I do. You, dear reader, are why Alice Hart lives. Your response to my first novel has transformed my solitary, trembling act of writing into something deep, communal and more spellbinding than wildflowers: connection. Because of you, Lost Flowers is no longer only mine. It’s ours. We are connected through story.

As I write this letter, I’m struck again by the power of stories. How they can hurt us, yet offer us safety. How they can entrap us, yet help us see ourselves and each other with more courage and tenderness. Stories ask us to slow down, to listen, to feel deeply. They draw us back to our humanity when the world feels loud and overwhelming. I believe, more fiercely than ever, that stories matter because they remind us how to be with each other with curiosity, care and grace.

Writing Alice Hart’s story taught me that unfathomable beauty can still grow from the hardest ground. Hope is an electric, stubborn force, a practice rather than a passing feeling. What this book has given me through your reading of it is something I will never stop being grateful for: you’ve shown me the many astonishing forms courage and love can take.

Thank you for reading Lost Flowers, whether for the first time or the fifth. Thank you for carrying this story so fiercely and tenderly. And thank you, most of all, for whispering or roaring cooee back to me. We’re here. We’re full of joy and grief, fear and hope, and we’re not alone.

Have courage, take heart.

2026