This beautifully realised Australian western romance set in northern NSW cattle country circa 1923 is an unusual bird in contemporary writing downunder, a conventional popular Western-style historical adventure re Arthur Upfield written with all the style and language of a literary awards winner. It is a beautiful tale and a remarkable evocation, fun and moving, adventurous and filled with the spirit of great yarners and stylists long gone, glowing with the spit-and-shovel characters and clichés that have struck gold in Australian writing from the days of JF Archibald and ‘Inky’ Stephensen and their protégés to the Wintons and Courtenays of our time.
Fascinating historical detail, entertaining side stories, indelible characters, the headiness of young romance, the romance of the Western, but most of all, the mercurial language of a lost literary past, a match for even Cormac McCarthy.
Tom Flood