‘In this subtle and captivating verse biography, Maureen Gibbons provides an imaginative, emotionally honest and deliberately inconclusive story for an actual historical figure – a homeless woman known as The Butter Lady, who was found dead in a Perth park in 2001.

The Butter Lady drifts at the periphery: observed fleetingly, befriended only here and there, and ultimately deeply isolated from the people she loves. When an old childhood friend, Pats, comes to Perth to look for an explanation for her death, The Butter Lady proves both familiar and elusive. A tender elegy.

—Julienne van Loon