Everything Grows Towards the Muted Light

Jude’s life has been defined by caring for others. As a mother, a social worker and now as a carer for her husband Henry, who has dementia. A woman in her sixties, Jude assumes that much in life – like joy or desire – is behind her.

But when she and Henry move back to her childhood home in a small country town, Jude reconnects with a woman she knew from high school, a gardener called Shayne, and a spark of attraction ignites.

Jude and Shayne join a community campaign to defend an ancient rainforest from logging, and draw closer together. But when Henry goes missing, Jude is stricken with guilt and forced to wrestle with her own preconceptions about sexuality, chosen families and care.

Vividly written, Everything Grows Towards the Muted Light is an unconventional queer coming-of-age story, and a tribute to the natural world under threat.

Miki Perkins is an award-winning senior journalist who specialises in coverage of the climate crisis and environment. She has been a reporter and editor at national media outlets for two decades.

Everything Grows Towards the Muted Light, winner of the Fearless Prize 2026, is her first novel.

ISBN 9781764646567
1 May 2027
Distributed by NewSouth Books