Listen: Young adult author Lynette Noni shares her real-life inspiration for her new fantasy novel
By Sam RobinsonTuesday 30 Mar 2021Hope BreakfastEntertainmentReading Time: 2 minutes
Number one bestselling Australian Young Adult author Lynette Noni is back with a new fantasy novel – The Prison Healer.
The first in a new trilogy, The Prison Healer is set in the death prison Zalindov, where 17-year-old Kiva has spent a decade fighting for survival, looking after the other inmates as the prison healer.
Fans of Lynette’s previous work, The Medoran Chronicles, will enjoy journeying to this new, dangerous world.
Source: Lynette Noni Facebook
Lynette joined Sam Robinson on Hope Breakfast to explain that the book’s fictional setting was inspired by a very real Australian location.
“I was on a book tour in the middle of 2019, over in Perth. I had a day off in between the sessions. People kept urging me to go to Fremantle Prison – a heritage listed site,” Lynette said.
“I went out there and the thing about Fremantle Prison that I didn’t know is that when there were prisoners there, their job or labour was to dig beneath the prison to provide water and then later for the township of Fremantle.
“I went down these insanely terrifying tunnels deep into the bowels of the earth. I walked through some of these tunnels that were dry and I even hopped into these canoes to paddle through the ones that were partially submerged. And the whole time I was there, the setting was coming alive in my mind.”
Lynette was so enamoured with the prison she returned that evening and did a night tour, and then on the five-hour flight back to her Queensland home, she started writing – turning what she had seen into the beginnings of a fantasy novel.
As a Christian, Lynette explained her faith is somewhat of a “guiding star” as she writes.
“It’s very next level. This is easily my darkest book so that was difficult for me to work from that space and work from a horrific world with horrible people. To me, our world is getting so much darker every single day. You can’t deny it. At the end of the day, I want people to enjoy the book, but if those who are willing to look deeper, I would like them to find hope through that and to see that there’s always light in that darkness,” she said.
“If Kiva can survive a death prison for 10 years, and keep surviving, whatever we are going through we can give it another day, and give it another day, and give it another day.”
Listen to the full chat with Lynette Noni in the player above. The Prison Healer is out now.