The Woodcutter's Wife Stepmother's Tale

“That’s not my Mummy—that’s Dolla! She sleeps with my Daddy. My Mummy lives in Adelaide.”

Once upon a time there was a classic 30-something modern woman: single, well-educated, successful, independent. But something was missing . . . until one day her very own Prince Charming came along, bringing a four-year-old son and dramas with the ex from hell—a heroin addict.

Dolla Merrillees soon realises that happy endings don’t occur in the twinkling of an eye. Now she’s supposed to play mother to someone else’s child. Will she descend to the Dark Side, like the evil stepmother in Snow White and the hideous old crone in Hansel and Gretel?

Honest, beautifully acerbic, witty, hair-raising and heart-warming, The Woodcutter’s Wife is no fairy tale:
it’s the warts’n’all story of a woman who doesn’t have all the answers;
of a little boy coping with rejection and a painful past riddled with drugs;
and of the idea that maybe a stepfamily can become a real family after all.

“Mummy uses those,” he stated bluntly, staring down at the needle in the gutter. “Mummy puts them in her arm.”