Exhausted and losing faith, Anglican minister Stephen Heriot abandons his mission in Australia's northwest. Wracked with guilt for his past transgressions, Heriot flees to the vast emptiness of the outback, searching for the islands of the Aboriginal dead. In the soul country of the desert he begins to reflect: was his life's work worthwhile? Are history's crimes also our own? Can any connection to be found in the unrelenting isolation of the land?
A Lear-like tale of madness and destruction, To the Islands was heralded for its poetic mastery upon its publication, when Stow was only twenty-two. It went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the ALS Gold Medal. Stow substantially revised the novel for its republication in 1982.
