The Survivors

Jane Harper resides in Melbourne, Australia. She was a journalist for 13 years before becoming a novelist, and she credits her journalistic background with giving her the tools for crafting a story that keeps readers engaged. Each chapter of her novels ends on a small cliffhanger making for a propulsive reading experience. Harper has a knack for surprise endings which she writes first and then works the story backward to the beginning. Interested in how people react to watershed moments in their lives, Harper draws characters that have intense, defining experiences that shape their lives going forward. At the heart of each of her novels is a mysterious crime, but the police procedural takes a back seat to the interior journey of the characters who are enmeshed in familial or small-town conflict. In addition to a complex web of characters, Harper sets her stories in severe, remote landscapes where the unforgiving terrain and harsh weather conditions become characters in the story.

The setting of Harper’s novels plays a large role in the plot and in shaping the characters. Harper captures the beauty along with the hostility of the Australian landscape while creating engaging storylines and relatable characters. She is credited with creating the genre of outback or rural noir, and her dark storylines are reminiscent of Australian classics like Picnic at Hanging Rock. Though her settings are always fictionalized, she adds elements that make them recognizable. In The Survivors, the shipwreck of the Minerva Mary is fictional, but most Australian readers will be familiar with the thousands of shipwrecks that litter the coast of Tasmania.

In The Survivors, the coastal town of Evelyn Bay depends on seasonal tourism to sustain its economy. Beyond the communal dependence on the landscape, its residents have developed a close relationship with the sea spending most of their lives swimming, deep sea diving, and exploring the cliffside caves near the water. Harper uses the shores of this coastal town to tell the story of one man’s search for absolution from the past and answers to the mysterious tragedy of the present. For each novel, Harper travels to the setting of the story to learn more about the landscape. While writing The Survivors, Harper traveled to Tasmania to learn more about its unique landscape and took scuba diving lessons to help her accurately craft the novel’s diving scene. Through immersive, atmospheric settings, well-crafted plots, relatable characters, and attention to emotional and psychological detail, Harper aims to deliver an engrossing, riveting, and satisfying reading experience.