A young woman and her baby go missing in an isolated Australian mining town. Two decades later human bones are washed up in the local lake. The only clue is that a man driving a truck wearing a hat did it, in a town where every man wears something on his head.
Twenty years later, Ruth returns to the town where she was born and where her mother was ostracised. That twenty years spans an unexplored territory of guilty secrets, centred on one man, Uncle Frank, whose silence has both protected him and his, but also inflicted inconsolable wounds.
Black and white. City and country. Women and men. This story of conflicts is told through the eyes of three women, separated by time, skin colour and allegiance, but united by their love of Frank. In the end it is up to Ruth to fill the silences, in order to find and lay to rest the truth.
1999 The Australian/Vogue Literary Award Runner-up.
