We move to Australia for the atmospheric debut from Helen Blackhurst. Monica Harvey is moving there with her parents, Michael and Caroline, and younger sister, Georgie. Encouraged to move by Michael’s brother, Monica’s Uncle Eddie, the family are expecting some kind of utopia. Landing in a one-street mining town in the outback is a shock. And that’s before they realise that Eddie has been burying the truth.
Life is tough for Monica. Her father, a journalist with little work, is clearly depressed, and the effervescent Caroline is becoming closer to Eddie than Monica would like. The twelve-year-old is left caring for Georgie, and there’s something not quite right about the little girl. And then, during a game of hide-and-seek, Georgie goes missing.
Blackhurst’s prose is so vivid that the reader can almost taste the dust and feel the unrelenting heat. But it’s her exploration of character that makes this debut shine. Monica narrates the start of the tale, but each of the other characters has a section of their own. This device works well, enabling the plot to be drip-fed to the reader in manageable chunks.
Eddie, so clearly a troubling influence, becomes more layered as the novel progresses. An idealist, he is slow to accept that his big dreams have no foundation.