'Rick's cousins are two specks floating on the horizon, leaving him far behind on the treacherous bush track. He looks at his punctured tyres in dismay. Ten kilometres. If he walks, he'll be too late to save them. If he runs, he'll expire in the heat.

'Somewhere across the flats, in between the red-dirt back roads, there's real trouble happening. Rick has never felt so alone; the land around him feels as alien as the moon - nothing like the city.

'But now is no time to hesitate... Ian and Nita are depending on him.

'Then the voice of his dead father comes ringing: 'Don't use up all your energy at once. Walk twenty, run twenty.''

Source: Publisher's blurb (2019 republication).