training --

Sally's story --

Jacko's reach --

Lone pine --

Blacksoil country --

Great day --

Southern skies --

A trip to the Grundelsee --

The empty lunch-tin --

Sorrows and secrets --

That antic Jezebel --

The only speaker of his tongue --

Out of the stream --

The sun in winter --

Bad blood --

A change of scene --

In trust --

A traveller's tale --

A medium --

Eustace --

The Prowler.

In this stunning collection, internationally acclaimed writer David Malouf gives us bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse. These are their stories, whole lives brought dramatically into focus and powerfully rooted in the vividly rendered landscape of the vast Australian continent. Malouf writes about men and women looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, puzzling over not only their own lives but also the place they have come to occupy in the lives of others.