" An] exceedingly powerful debut. Wilson's compelling story carries us through forest and over plains, leaving a trail of dead men."
" "Alan Cheuse, "The Chicago Tribune"
1829, Tasmania. A group of men convicts, a farmer, two free black traders, and Black Bill, an aboriginal man brought up from childhood as a white man are led by Jon Batman, a notorious historical figure, on a roving party. Their purpose is massacre. With promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize. Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches...

A powerful, suspenseful tale about a father and son in search of one another, this prize-winning novel based on real-life events is a classic western story of vengeance and redemption set against the sweeping, merciless grandeur of the Australian frontier.
It is the summer of 1874. Launceston, a colonial outpost on the southern Australian island of Tasmania, hovers on the brink of anarchy, teeming with revolutionaries, convicts, drunks, crooked cops, and poor strugglers looking for a break. Outlaw Thomas Toosey races to this dangerous bedlam to find his motherless twelve-year-old...