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Dancing with Dragons
by Jenni Ogden 
Category: Women's Friendship Fiction, Coming of Age Fiction, Ebooks
Praise "Ogden crafts an inventive and vivid narrative that is beautifully told [with] a lightly poetic writing style that particularly comes alive when describing Gaia's dancing and the wildlife of Western Australia. Gaia is an immensely appealing protagonist who begins her story as a skittish loner and displays clear development throughout the novel. Ogden effectively weaves together two primary plots: Gaia's return to life after tragedy, and her quest to save her family's land from developers. Both aspects are finely executed and equally intriguing without feeling disparate." --The BookLife Prize |
ABOUT THE BOOK
From Jenni Ogden, author of multiple-award-winning A Drop in the Ocean, comes another evocative story of friendship, coral reefs, and marine conservation for book-club readers.
It is the late 1970s and teenagers Gaia and her brother Bron live with their parents on their isolated property on Western Australia’s Coral Coast. Intensively trained for a career as a professional ballet dancer by her mother, once a Principal Dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, Gaia also loves snorkeling over the coral reef that borders their small market garden. Then comes a day that changes her life forever: she discovers a rare pair of dramatically colored seadragons, their courtship dance over the coral spellbinding, and that night she loses her entire family and her dancing dream. Two years later she returns to the abandoned property, determined to live off the land. For years her only friends are the wild animals of the bush and reef, and Mary and Eddie, an Aboriginal couple who work for the racist farmer on the neighboring property — until one morning Jarrah, Mary’s 11-year-old orphaned nephew, is entranced when he sees Gaia dancing on the beach. As an unlikely friendship between these two lonely and scarred people deepens, they discover that when you lose everything the only way to survive is to open your heart.
From Jenni Ogden, author of multiple-award-winning A Drop in the Ocean, comes another evocative story of friendship, coral reefs, and marine conservation for book-club readers.
It is the late 1970s and teenagers Gaia and her brother Bron live with their parents on their isolated property on Western Australia’s Coral Coast. Intensively trained for a career as a professional ballet dancer by her mother, once a Principal Dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, Gaia also loves snorkeling over the coral reef that borders their small market garden. Then comes a day that changes her life forever: she discovers a rare pair of dramatically colored seadragons, their courtship dance over the coral spellbinding, and that night she loses her entire family and her dancing dream. Two years later she returns to the abandoned property, determined to live off the land. For years her only friends are the wild animals of the bush and reef, and Mary and Eddie, an Aboriginal couple who work for the racist farmer on the neighboring property — until one morning Jarrah, Mary’s 11-year-old orphaned nephew, is entranced when he sees Gaia dancing on the beach. As an unlikely friendship between these two lonely and scarred people deepens, they discover that when you lose everything the only way to survive is to open your heart.
Jenni Ogden
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenni Ogden lives with her husband on a rugged, remote, off-grid island 100 kms off the north-east coast of New Zealand. It is a place her four adult children and five grandchildren love to visit. During the NZ winters she escapes to the Australian tropics or travels to the US or UK, travel being another passion, along with reading (writing!) and conservation. Her new novel, CALL MY NAME, another great read for bookclubs, is set mainly in Queensland, Australia. It is the story of two women, bound together by contrasting personalities, friendship, love and home—until motherhood rips them apart. THE MOON IS MISSING, published in 2020, was set in London, New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and on the very island Jenni lives on in NZ. A DROP IN THE OCEAN, her debut novel, set on another remote island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, features a woman over forty, and explores Jenni’s favorite themes: friendship, family, love, hard choices, and coping with neurological or medical illness. In 2016 it won the Gold in the Nautilus Book Awards for Fiction, Large Publisher, (shared with Monica Wood's novel, 'The One-In-A-Million-Boy'), the Gold for the Sarton Women's Book Awards in Contemporary Fiction, the Gold in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYS) for Best Fiction: Australia and NZ, and the Silver in the Readers' Favorites International Book Awards for Women's Fiction.
Writes Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times #1 best-selling author of 'The Deep End of the Ocean' and 'Two If By Sea'— “Reading A Drop in the Ocean was everything a reading experience should be, endearing and enduring, time spent with characters who seem to be people I already knew.”
And from Ann Hood, New York Times best-selling author of 'The Knitting Circle' and 'The Obituary Writer'—“In A Drop in the Ocean, protagonist Anna Fergusson learns that love is about letting go. Jenni Ogden takes us on a sweeping journey, rich with unique characters and places, moving backward and forward in time, to reach this poignant and heartfelt lesson.”
Before she took up fiction writing, Dr. Ogden enjoyed an international reputation as a neuropsychologist, and was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the International Neuropsychological Society in 2015. Her non-fiction books include the classic text, FRACTURED MINDS, and a book for the general reader, TROUBLE IN MIND. Both relate the courageous struggles and triumphs of people who have suffered brain disorders.
Website:
https://www.jenniogden.com/
Jenni Ogden lives with her husband on a rugged, remote, off-grid island 100 kms off the north-east coast of New Zealand. It is a place her four adult children and five grandchildren love to visit. During the NZ winters she escapes to the Australian tropics or travels to the US or UK, travel being another passion, along with reading (writing!) and conservation. Her new novel, CALL MY NAME, another great read for bookclubs, is set mainly in Queensland, Australia. It is the story of two women, bound together by contrasting personalities, friendship, love and home—until motherhood rips them apart. THE MOON IS MISSING, published in 2020, was set in London, New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and on the very island Jenni lives on in NZ. A DROP IN THE OCEAN, her debut novel, set on another remote island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, features a woman over forty, and explores Jenni’s favorite themes: friendship, family, love, hard choices, and coping with neurological or medical illness. In 2016 it won the Gold in the Nautilus Book Awards for Fiction, Large Publisher, (shared with Monica Wood's novel, 'The One-In-A-Million-Boy'), the Gold for the Sarton Women's Book Awards in Contemporary Fiction, the Gold in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYS) for Best Fiction: Australia and NZ, and the Silver in the Readers' Favorites International Book Awards for Women's Fiction.
Writes Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times #1 best-selling author of 'The Deep End of the Ocean' and 'Two If By Sea'— “Reading A Drop in the Ocean was everything a reading experience should be, endearing and enduring, time spent with characters who seem to be people I already knew.”
And from Ann Hood, New York Times best-selling author of 'The Knitting Circle' and 'The Obituary Writer'—“In A Drop in the Ocean, protagonist Anna Fergusson learns that love is about letting go. Jenni Ogden takes us on a sweeping journey, rich with unique characters and places, moving backward and forward in time, to reach this poignant and heartfelt lesson.”
Before she took up fiction writing, Dr. Ogden enjoyed an international reputation as a neuropsychologist, and was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the International Neuropsychological Society in 2015. Her non-fiction books include the classic text, FRACTURED MINDS, and a book for the general reader, TROUBLE IN MIND. Both relate the courageous struggles and triumphs of people who have suffered brain disorders.
Website:
https://www.jenniogden.com/