Showing results by author "Kim Lock" in All Categories

Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people: she hasn't been outside that house for two years now. Flung out into the world she's been studiously ignoring, Mercy goes to the only place she can. Her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene's house. But it turns out she can't stay there, either. And so begins Mercy's unwilling journey.

In the small suburb of Gawler, South Australia, the tang of cut grass and eucalyptus seems to mingle perpetually on the warm air. The neat houses perched under the big gum trees on Church Street have been home to many over the long years. Years of sprinklers stuttering over clipped lawns, children playing behind low brick walls. A seemingly endless stream of youthful paperboys. Family barbecues. Gossipy neighbours. Arguments. Accidents. Births, deaths, marriages. This ordinary street has seen it all. Until the arrival of newlyweds Thomas and Elsie Mullet.

Port Kingerton: the insular cray-fishing town at the butt-end of South Australia, where everyone knows everyone. And everyone knows too that when Abigail Fancy left town at seventeen, she hung out the window of her boyfriend's Corolla, middle fingers held high, swearing she'd never come back. And she hasn't, until now. At her parents' house Abigail finds a party (read: town meeting) in full swing over something iffy found on the beach—a thigh bone.