2023 - Limberlost, Robbie Arnott | Wagga Wagga City Library

Photos: Author Robbie Arnott, the cover of Limberlost, Aunty Cheryl Penrith gives a Welcome to Country, audience members at The Gardens Function Centre for the Gala Dinner, Robbie in conversation with ABC Riverina's Sally Bryant at Collins Booksellers.

Robbie has brown curly hair and is smiling closed-mouthed at the camera. He wears a deep blue shirt.

The cover of Limberlost features an impressionistic painting in yellows, greens and browns, with the shape of a tree prominent on the left, and a boat and river in the foreground.

Aunty Cheryl is centre, wearing a spotted red dress with matching cardigan and a necklace. Behind her is the reflection of hung lights in a large window, and diners' heads are in soft focus in the foreground.

A group of audience members, in hues of gold and brown, are looking right, towards the stage, with bud lights hung above them, and reflected in the windows behind them.

Author Robbie Arnott, right, is in conversation with ABC Riverina's Sally Bryant, left, with the shelves and banners of Collins Booksellers in the background.

‹ ›

The novel selected for One Book One Wagga 2023 was Limberlost by Robbie Arnott.

In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat.His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost.

Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water.As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

'He writes beautifully! May his readers and his rewards abound!' — Thomas Keneally

'Limberlost exceeded all my expectations. It is a gorgeously written coming-of-age novel.' — Readings

Nearly four hundred library members borrowed Limberlost, ahead of the Gala dinner at The Gardens Function Centre in the Wagga Botanic Gardens, with interviewer Peter Casey, on Friday 19th May 2023.

Limberlost went on to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2023, the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, and Fiction, Indie Book Awards 2023. It was also longlisted for the Fiction, Booktopia Favourite Australian Book Award 2022, and Commended for Fiction, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2023.