Book: The Outback Heart

Summary: Indianna Wilson is a country girl through and through. She'll do anything she can to save her beloved home town from disappearing off the map – even if she has to die trying. She brings Troy Force to her tiny outback town, with hopes that he can bring a breath of fresh air to the Saints football club and lift the wider farming community.

He's just the spark they need in Hyden but it's the fire that he ignites in Indi's heart that takes her by surprise. She knows he's feeling something too – why, then, does he insist on pushing her away? What is it from his dark past that's preventing them from sharing a future?

As the town rallies together and their fighting spirit returns, Indi and Troy discover that sometimes life offers up a second chance – you just have to be brave enough to take it.


What I thought: Loved it. Fiona Palmer is one of my absolute favourite rural authors. This centered on AFL (which I love) and also about organ donation. I think the personal element she bought into the book was great.

Book: Outback Heart

Summary: Joanne van Os was just twenty-two when she met Rod Ansell. At twenty-three Rod was already a legend in Australia and around the world, having survived alone for two months without supplies in one of the harshest and most remote parts of northern Australia. To Joanne, Rod was a a genuine hero who could do anything, could make anything out of nothing, told the funniest yarns, had a philosophy on everything. She married him, and they had two beautiful sons who idolised their father. Together they lived the tough life of outback bull catchers and cattle musterers.But as time went on Joanne came to realise that Rod was both a complicated and deeply troubled man. For the sake of her sons she never gave up on Rod, even after their divorce, but just how far he'd gone only became apparent when his life ended in tragedy: out of his mind on drugs, Rod became involved in a shootout in which a young police office was killed. 'How does someone, whose extraordinary story of survival in the wild inspired so many Australians, become a psychotic, drug-crazed gunman?' Joanne asks. Outback Heart captures the Territory life on paper: the dust, the heat, the struggle and the larger-than-life characters. But it's also a deeply moving and powerful story of a love affair and a marriage, and the pain when it all falls apart. It's the story of Rod Ansell, but even more it is Joanne's story, of how a young, naive woman grows up the hard way, and has the most exhilarating and the most heartbreaking times doing it.


What I thought: I really enjoyed this as she grew up just around the corner from me and I went to school with her nephews so I felt like I knew many of the people individually. What a life though. Just amazing. The Territory is just so different from my world...