The Missing Wife

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A crime fiction novel set in a remote river town in outback Australia. A mail order bride has gone missing. Her husband says she has run off with a stranger. Her parents in Sri Lanka know this could not be true.

The so-called “mail-order bride” phenomenon developed to fill the needs of lonely men, particularly in regional Australia. But the marriages did not always work out.Nilanthi was such a bride. The youngest of five daughters in a family where status was higher than income, her parents had difficulty providing a dowry large enough to attract a suitably well-to-do husband for her. Believing all westerners were rich, she chose to take her chances with an unknown suitor, a farmer in far-away Australia.

When Nilanthi goes missing, her parents in Sri Lanka ask Laura, a Sydney history teacher, for help in finding their daughter. To find the young woman, Laura has to travel a thousand kilometres inland and fifty years back into her own family’s tragic past.

March 2004, 248pp
Fiction, 1st edition
ISBN 1 92078702 X
Paperback, 210 x 138 mm
RRP $aud 23.95
ISBN-13 9781920787025

The Author see also: Worm in the Bud

June Duncan Owen’s training and experience in history (MA from Sydney University), social work (University of Adelaide), teaching and farming inform her writing. Her later book, Worm in the Bud, was well received by readers throughout Australia.

June’s published works include
The Missing Wife, Indra Publishing 2004
Mixed Matches: Interracial Marriage in Australia, University of New South Wales Press, 2002
Writing and Selling Articles (Australian/New Zealand Guide), Hale & Iremonger, 1997
How to Write and Sell Articles, Penguin Books, 1992
The Heart of the City, Kangaroo Press, 1987.

One Response to “The Missing Wife”

  1. Thilini C. Silva Says:

    Just finished reading this. Quite awesome and complete in the sense of a proper crime fiction. I am sure this is influenced with one or more true incidents. Great work.