The Shadow of a Man

Moya Bethune has left the city behind for the sunburnt plains of the Riverina, engaged to the taciturn pastoralist Pelham Rigden. On the verandah of Eureka Station, with the vast Australian bush pressing close, she imagines a future among the dust and silence. But Rigden carries shadows. When a stranger materializes on the horizon, something in his manner unravels the careful calm of the station, and Moya begins to suspect the man she intends to marry has buried secrets in this red earth. Hornung, better known for his Raffles tales of cunning and deception, brings that same unease to a story of love in the outback: beneath the romance lies a slow, creeping dread that the past has followed them both into the bush. What unfolds is a study of what we hide from those we claim to love, and the price of building a life on unsettled ground.