Leah Purcell's The Drover's Wife takes out Book of the Year

By Linda Morris
Updated June 4 2017 - 9:43am, first published May 23 2017 - 9:58am

When the indigenous actress and director, Leah Purcell, took out her mother's tattered copy of Henry Lawson's short stories, she had no idea that the script she would bang out in seven days would be named Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Monday night.