The novel is Australian fiction, set in the early 2000's, with three main characters:
A young doctor who takes on a contract in an outback town in WA, escaping career and relationship disappointments, an Indigenous young man coping with too many assessments and no understanding, and a boy who sees the people and nature through a different lens.
Each has to deal with their own role when two deaths occur, and everyone in the community their responsibility. Against a savagely intruding landscape, the novel is a homage to the people in outback communities and the water and earth that so shapes them.