A Sapphire Coast collaboration is commemorating the Black Summer bushfires in a new children's book that adults will love too.
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The Tale of the Singleton Pup tells the story of a rescue pup with a big heart who finds a loving family in a tiny bush town.
At eight weeks old she is lanky, carefree and endlessly playful, until the bushfires come roaring towards her new home.
The story is rooted in reality, with Bella an actual rescue puppy from Singleton owned by author Helen Lewis, who hails from Towamba, near Eden on the NSW Far South Coast.
Now 2.5 years old, Bella was with Ms Lewis as she evacuated to Tura Beach during the height of the Black Summer bushfire emergency on the Far South Coast.
Ms Lewis said the first few lines of the poem came to her while she was at the Tura Beach Country Club, which had made its premises available to people and their pets escaping the 2019/20 bushfires.
"Bella was eight weeks old and I had only had for for five days. We had collected her from Singleton and here we were moving her again," Ms Lewis said.
"She took it all in her stride She was amazingly resilient and I think she kept me grounded."
While those first few lines noted on her phone proved the seed of an idea for the book, it was a chance meeting with Merimbula-based artist and illustrator Belinda Rosenbaum where it really took flight.
The pair met just after the bushfire emergency had been declared over and the COVID-19 pandemic had begun.
"I remember vividly the feelings I had when first reading Helen's words," Ms Rosenbaum said.
"I was flooded at once with imagery and knew I was on the hook and needed to be the visual storyteller of this gorgeous little pup's tale."
The Tale of the Singleton Pup is told in a verse that offers a salute to the bush poets of old, and with lush illustrations, Ms Lewis acknowledged it was evocative of a time that still haunts many.
However, she said the story of the plucky puppy is written in a way that leads readers safely through that chaos so terrifying for many.
"Belinda and I were very conscious that if we were going to take people, and especially children, back to that time, we had to bring them out again, safely," Ms Lewis said.
Ms Lewis is no stranger to challenging subject matter. Her previous book, The Dead Still Cry Out, is an award-winning foray into her father's experiences as a combat photographer during World War II.
The memoir won the 2018 Mark and Evette Moran NiB Literary Award for excellence in research.
The Tale of the Singleton Pup is published by Pup Publishing and available at select bookshops and via John Reed Books, sales@johnreedbooks.com.au.