With shades of Water for Elephants and True Grit, a stunning debut novel set in the Australian outback about a female horse thief, her bid for freedom, and the two men trying to capture her. It is 1921. In a mountain-locked valley, Jessie is on the run.
Born wild and brave, by twenty-six she has already lived life as a circus rider, horse and cattle rustler, and convict. But on this fateful night she is just a woman wanting to survive though there is barely any life left in her.
Two men crash through the bushland, desperate to claim the reward on her head: one her lover, the other the law.
But as it has always been for Jessie, it is death, not a man, who is her closest pursuer and companion. And while all odds are stacked against her, there is one who will never give up on her—her own child, who awaits her.
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“Broadly based on the life of Australian ‘wild woman’ Jessie Hickman,
Collins’s debut novel ranges widely over the Australian frontier—and
into one woman’s dark and damaged heart…Collins’s poetic language and salty dialogue tell the story of a woman
whose life is inextricable from the bleak landscape she not only
traverses but also inhabits.”
—
Publishers Weekly