Description

Based
on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love,
sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story. A dark, chilling
debut novel from award-winning writer Heather Parry.

German doctor Wilhelm Von Tore shares with the reader the story of his one true
love; a love written in the stars, decades in the making, a love so strong it
transcended death itself. When Wilhelm emigrates to America he carries with him
a vision of a dark-haired beauty, presented to him in his dreams by his beloved
late Grandmother. In Key West, Florida, a beautiful young woman is taken to him
in the grip of illness, and he recognises her immediately as his promised
bride. Despite his efforts, the sickness takes hold and his beloved slips away
from him. But Wilhelm will not be kept from his destiny, not even by death.
Using research compiled over decades, he sets about attempting to restore his
love to her body, so that they might be together forever.

But
there’s another voice in this story: Gabriela, and she will not let this
version of events go unchallenged. From between the cracks in Wilhelm’s story
Gabriela recounts her own memory of her sister Luciana, a fiery and difficult young
woman, and the madman who robbed her from her grave.

Publisher Review

Winner of the 2016 Bridge Award for an Emerging Writer Cove Park's 2017 Emerging Writer Resident 2021 Hawthornden Fellow