THE NEW NOVEL BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE WEEKEND, NOW LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
 
A Guardian Book of the Summer 2024
A book of the year for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award
Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the ABIA Award for Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award
 
'A beautiful, mature work that does not flinch from life'
SUNDAY TIMES
 
'A book about what it means to be good: simply and with great humility, it asks the big questions, leaving the reader feeling kinder, more brave, enlarged'
ANNE ENRIGHT, author of The Wren, The Wren
 
'I have rarely been so absorbed by a novel . . . A powerful, generous book'
GUARDIAN
 
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback.

She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
 
But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation.

Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.