Book excerpt: Life on a cattle station in Australia’s unforgiving Northern Territory is rough. The extreme heat, humidity, insects, dust, isolation, and predators forge impenetrable bonds among those who can survive here. The people are just as hardened—and just as unforgiving—as the wild lands they fight to tame. In 1987, Clare Daine, a schoolteacher from Melbourne, takes up the job of governess to identical triplets at the Opium Creek station. She’s shocked to discover that the “homestead” is little more than an old tin shed with limited electricity. Her employer, Jack Marlow, a narcissistic alcoholic, is extremely demanding, and the other men of the station are as raw around the edges as the station itself. Three years before Clare’s arrival, the triplets’ mother, Lily, disappeared during a brutal wet-season storm. Now, doubt has left the close-knit community nervous, suspicious, and aggrieved. When Wanatjiti, Lily’s renegade stallion, returns, old wounds are opened, and unanswered questions rise again. Ngunintja, the triplets’ grandmother, has her own theories about what really happened during that fateful storm. And now nightmares tear Clare’s sleep apart. Her dedication to the children is the only thing that keeps her from fleeing the horrors of this life. Slowly, she comes to understand the love-hate relationship they all share with each other and with the land itself. Clare’s single-minded determination to discover the truth behind Lily’s disappearance puts her own safety at risk. How far will she go to solve the mystery?