Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In this stunning novel, Australian writer Nikki Gemmell writes of extremes: of blacks and whites, trust and betrayal, love and the empty openness of loss. She situates her story in the Australian outback which is described with a toughness and a lyricism that reflects her narrator's soul as profoundly as it conveys the landscape itself. Phillipa 'Snip' Freeman, the narrator, is a young and fiercely independent woman who has received a large check and a mysterious note upon her grandmother's death in which she is instructed to 'hunt' her father 'down.' She embarks on a quest with a truck and a traveling companion named Dave, a man who evokes all that Snip experiences in the world of men: love, fear, disappointment. They travel into the Australian interior where she finds not only her father but also truths that reframe her perceptions of her past, her future, and her very being. This novel is a best-seller in Australia and is certainly deserving of such a standing in this country. It is a lovely work, a coming of age piece, the maturing of a young woman into a new frontier of soul and experience that comes to look a bit like salvation." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
An achingly beautiful story of love, loss, and redemption is set in the breathtaking Australian desert as a girl hunts down her father in the communal land of the Aborigines.
About the Author
Nikki Gemmell, formerly a radio journalist in Sydney, Darwin, and Alice Springs,Australia, now lives in London and is a producer at the BBC World Service. Her first book, Shiver, was a bestseller in Australia and has been optioned for film by Roger Donaldson, the director of Dante's Peak and Species.