When his family discover that six year old Denny Wallace has become lost in the South Australian Flinder Ranges in September 1883, the farming community join forces to look for him. The story takes place over the seven days of searching, the questions of whether he will be found and in what state permeate. 

Failure is a stooped, pale figure with an open mouth and swollen eyes.

McFarlane introduces a swathe of characters in crisscrossing storylines – the local police officer Robert and his new German wife Minna, Swedish artist and his English wife bess, the well meaning but hapless local priest Mr. Daniels, Aboriginal man Billy Rough, Denny’s tough teenage sister Cissy who insists on joining the search, and Denny himself who’s fear and deteriorating state cause him hallucinations and contribute to him staying lost.

For now he studies what he thinks may be his final true desert sunset. The sky burns and leaps, it gilds and candles—every drenched inch of it, until the sun falls below the ranges. Then the sky darkens. The red returns, stealthy now, with green above and lilac higher still. It deepens into purple. Here’s the strange new cloud, hovering in its own grey light. Then night comes in, black and blue and grey and white, and the moon in its green bag swings heavy over the red nation of the ranges.

As each new character’s perspective is introduced the story deepens and becomes more textured with layers of detail unfolding. The evocative danger and beauty of the outback provides a backdrop to the drama as it unfolds.

Poetically crafted literary fiction with themes including belonging and unbelonging, colonialism, isolation, gender roles.