Grassdogs

"They were a river of dogs. Loose skeins of cloud drifted high above, floating to the east, foretelling of cold nights. The paddocks rolled smoothly beneath his feet.

They rested against the windbreaks of fallen trees. They slept in the lee of a half-built haystack; left the next day at dawn before its builder returned. While he was daunted by the demands of his responsibilities, Edgar loved this companionable, aimless end. He wished it might never finish."

Tony Tindale is a young lawyer sent on a mission to rescue an uncle he barely knows. What he discovers is Edgar: a man innocent in the ways of the world, brought up on a desperate farm in the west of New South Wales and orphaned too soon, whose only solace is the dogs who find him. A natural target for suspicion in the small, isolated community, inevitably one day Edgar is found in the wrong place at the wrong time.

'Grassdogs' is a superb evocation of the Australian landscape, and a moving story of the nature of innocence, of families and justice.