AustLit

""Here's some pidgin, Mick," and Garrick spoke rapidly. "Who been dat pella? Where him been prom? You been subby him? Him been talk punny way, ay? Him been kardiya bloke.""

""What?" Mick shook his head quickly."
'"I said, 'who is that man? Where is he from? Do you know him? Doesn't he talk in a strange way? He's a stranger in this place'.""

'It's 2017. Mick Wilson's wife has taken off from Adelaide with a long-haul truck-driver and Mick's two little kids. In an attempt to find his family, Mick, a brick-layer and former top-level Australian Rules footballer, blindly heads for Alice Springs.

'In Central Australia, where many people go to hide from their past, Mick finds a different and challenging world. He stumbles into work on a remote cattle station, with an Aboriginal community close by. He also finds three very different women who shape his destiny.

'Racial tensions, tangled personal relationships, a mysterious mountain range and a struggling Aboriginal community and football team force Mick to become part of a strange new world and way of being. Across a cultural divide, new understandings emerge in the most unlikely ways.

'Through it all, Mick searches and aches for his kids, but because of the people he comes to know, he's never alone. '(Publication summary)