Cleave by Nikki Gemmell is a story about the relationship between a father and his daughter set against the stark landscape of the desert in the Australian outback.

The story begins with a cheque. The envelope that carried it was bruised with grubbiness and worn thin from too many hands. The envelope took two months to find her. The amount of the cheque was substantial and the typewritten instructions were blunt: hunt him down

Thirty year old Snip Freeman is a nomadic loner and artist based in Sydney. Her grandmother died and left her enough money to buy a ute and a request to return to Alice Springs and find her father, Bud. Dave responds to an add Snip places for someone to share the journey and the two strike up a relationship of sorts. Dave is fascinated by Snip’s free spiritedness, even after she abandons him.

A man told her once she’s the type of woman men never leave. They don’t. She leaves them. She gives them the feeling that any minute she’ll be off, so while they’re with her they’re obsessed.

Snip and Bud’s relationship is complicated. He absconded with her when she was a child after his relationship with her mother ended, cut Snip’s hair and turned her into a boy to disguise who she was. Their reunion almost becomes deadly when the two of them take trip into the desert.

People without curiosity are like houses without books: there’s something unsettling about them.

Cleave was written in 1998, but its outback setting gives it a timeless quality. The story includes Indigenous characters written without appropriation – perhaps a consequence of Gemmell’s personal experience of living in Alice Springs.