In 'The Drover's Wife', one of Lawson's most famous stories, the nameless heroine fights fire and flood, defends herself and her children againts interlopers, and in the story's central incident, kills the snake threatening them all. Lawson brilliantly evokes the underlying truth of the woman's desperated loneliness, the slow, irresistible erosion of her hopes and dreams and her sad attempts to revive the values and scenes of a past life.