_Have a Happy New Year of reading and writing and everything else you desire.

I have begin to pitch my novel to publishers. So you can guess what my New Year goal is.

Dreaming Billabong

Author Kathryn Shell

Children begin and then try to stop an escalating culture of payback in this compelling story of treachery and love during European settlement of Australia.

Young adults will relate to Jarrah and Emily being torn by the demands of adults. Most readers who enter this journey though the life of the cattle king, Alan Fife, will see a little of their own struggles for identity and acceptance within this historical crime fiction that is told mainly though the lives of the children. Seniors will relive the 1950s period of Australian history.

            In 1877 free settlers arrive to the semi arid inland of Fife Springs north-west of the Great Dividing Range.  At first they coexisted with the Woggan-Wandong people. Then the children, Alan and Charlotte, witness the development of intolerance and see these emerge as bitter altercations that sow the seeds for the white Australia policy.

            In 1945, Jarrah, and his two cousins of mixed Scottish and Woggan-Wandong heritage have their childhood wrenched from them by the danger and cruelty of the stolen generation phase of Australia’s history. They each emerge triumphant by drawing on their strengths and instincts to survive.

            During this post World War Two period, the second rush of Australian settlement takes place. Migration from Europe and the catch cry of ‘populate or perish’ have a tumultuous effect on the quiet peaceful inland Australian country town of Fife Springs.

            Two children Emily and her brother Harry have had their childhood traumatised by the crime of, and resulting loss of a parent. They are thrust into an environment with hidden dangers.  Payback continues and the children, one urged on by the ghost of a massacre the others aided by the dreaming spirits and nature, struggle with a culture of revenge that has harmed their family for generations.

            Woggan-Wandong means The meeting of the Spirit Ghosts.