4.5 stars

“…I’d tended to view farmers’ predicaments as a function of personal choice. They choose to work with nature, so why are they surprised when the elements misbehave. I even theorised that they brought it upon themselves: If they stopped sucking the rivers dry, maybe the weather would be kinder to them. It took a late spring dust storm in Jandowae for me to understand the devastating cumulative effect of arbitrary meteorological events on farmers. And in particular, their effect on my farmer, who struggled so valiantly to respect the natural resources with which he worked.”

Love in the Age of Drought is the first book by Australian author, Fiona Higgins. When Sydney philanthropy executive, Fiona Collins meets Queensland cotton farmer, Stuart Higgins, she doesn’t have the slightest inkling of how radically her life will change. Mere months later, this cemented city girl is stunned to find herself uprooting her life, moving to outback Queensland and becoming part of the Jandowae community.

When Higgins describes the man who will later become her husband, it’s not too hard to understand why she did. Altruistic, environmentally responsible, pragmatic, often laconic, and occasionally a true romantic, Stuart Higgins sounds almost too good to be true. Higgins writes with honesty and humour, and does not hesitate at self-deprecation: encounters with snakes, frogs, spiders, cats, rats and locals all provide grins, chuckles and laughs. There’s also quite a bit of interesting information on farming cotton and the GM debate.

What becomes apparent to the reader is that Higgins has put her knowledge, some of it highly personal, of life in Indonesia, as well as topics like fear of flying, of snakes, of commitment, to very good use in her later novel, Fearless. Funny and moving, this delightful read also offers food for thought. Recommended!