

In Conversation with Erina Reddan (Broadmeadows Library)
Hume Libraries
Join us in conversation with Erina Reddan as we discuss her new novel “Deep in the Forest”, exploring power, cults, and the need to belong. Erina Reddan thought she’d had a pretty ordinary childhood, but when she started writing a new book about a woman who discovers terrible secrets about The Sanctuary, a neighbouring closed community, she realised that she too had grown up in a kind of cult. She lived on an isolated farm in a Catholic community with rules about what you ate, and when, and she never met or interacted with anybody who wasn’t Catholic. It wasn’t until decades later when the Royal Commission revealed that her nearby town was one of the hot spots for paedophilia in Victoria that she saw just how harmful giving a priest the authority of God was. Erina started her latest book Deep in the Forest thinking that only vulnerable people were easy prey for cults but then realised that nobody actually joins a cult by choice. People are looking for a better life by being part of a like-minded community, looking for a sense of belonging and acceptance. When Erina left home at seventeen, she joined a small commune of youth workers who ran self-esteem leadership camps, auspiced by the Catholic Church. And now she asks herself: was she one of the cult leaders? With vivid and shimmering prose, Deep in the Forest is a gripping thriller with a shocking conclusion that will leave you spellbound, while raising questions about who we trust and why.
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