Darling Humans: A Year in the Shadows of Kings Cross

 I went to find life after parenthood, have a second crack at things. And I went to write. 

I found my muse everywhere, lives pushed into the margins, human beings subsisting on illegal substances and the pastimes needed to fund their supply. The place pulsed. I felt alive. I also found my own wounds. I saw my wreckage reflected in a thousand damaged mirrors. And I kept on, refusing to look away.  Becoming witness and participant in life on the streets and writing it all down.

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Intoxicated with the non-stop pleasure playground of Kings Cross (Sydney), would-be writer, Grace Heers, abandons conventional life to seek her muse on the streets of the Cross. The place never sleeps, and the revelry calls to her at all hours of the day and night. She answers, eating up the wildness and washing it down with the river of booze that flows through the hotels and clubs of Kings Cross. She gets up close with those living on the fringes, the fascinating parade of human all-sorts; a hunter-gather sifting through their wreckage for stories.

Her obsession with the beauty and savagery compels her and what she finds is achingly raw: the characters flaunt their chemical dependencies and their damage, unable or unwilling to hide them. She pushes deeper, sets her gaze, intent on uncovering the forbidden. She wants to see all of it.

Over time, Grace begins to recognise her own cravings running through the ravaged bodies around her and is forced to reckon with her love affair with alcohol, her own story, the reasons she is here.

Darling Humans is a poignant tribute to the resilience and courage of those who have fallen through the cracks. It pulls no punches, inviting readers to partake of the tenderness and brutality of humanity and discover the ultimate truth: there is no 'us and them'.

This intimate memoir will make your heart ache with the beauty of all of us: darling humans.