Twelve-year-old Celia Maria was named after saints and martyrs to give her something to live up to.
Over my dead body, she vows.
In the blinding heat of 1970s Queensland, she battles six brothers on her side of the fence, and the despised Kapernicky girls, lurking on the other side of the barbed wire.
Secrets, buried deep, surface decades later when Celia drags her own reluctant teenagers back home to dance on a grave and track down some ghosts.
Tough-minded but tender, Dust glitters with a rare and subtle wit, illuminating the shadows that hang over from childhood, and finding beauty in unexpected places.
Published by Random House Australia 2009
[...] The landscape of my youth and the drought that defined my childhood starred in my first novel Dust. [...]