Robert Drewe Libri

Short stories from Goldie Goldbloom, award-winning author of The Paperbark Shoe. Dark. Delicious. Superb.

Will Dance is the son of a "drowner", a man who understands the secrets of irrigation. With actress Angelica Lloyd, whom he meets at the public baths, Will journeys to western Australia to work on the engineering miracle that was to bring fresh water uphill to a desert town gripped by two fevers: the goldrush and typhoid. While the love story of Angelica and Will is at the heart of this novel, it is but a part of the daring epic romance that unfolds.

Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city - and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness. Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers - variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims and running them down with cars - and an innocent Perth was changed forever. In the middle-class waterside suburbs which were the killer's main stalking grounds, the mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant local myth. Many people were deeply affected, not least the young Robert Drewe.

Grace is a young urban film critic on the run from a delusional stalker an erotomaniac who fell in love with the photo on her magazine column. Leading an adventure tour in the wilderness in Australia, she chances upon a young refugee, an escapee from a desert detention camp. He's on the run, she's on the run. This is a novel about that most pertinent and deluded of animal obsessions territory.