When did it all start? This feeling of being beneath water; slow and cumbersome, every movement met with something thicker than air, some form of resistance she was unable to see.

On a rundown station in the remote top end of Australia, life for Susannah is isolated and difficult. Susannah is left alone by her husband who is the manager of the station. She is forced to cope with their young twins, the hard physical work of running the homestead, and the frustration that these things now mark the boundaries of her life. Nothing is as she expected it to be; a dark history seeps through the land and the air shimmers with heat and an intangible menace. And then a young English girl, Laura, hired by her husband, arrives on the property to work as a jillaroo. Laura falls in love with Texas, the Aboriginal head stockman, naively believing that her love will pull him out of long-held destructive habits. And Susannah, preoccupied by her own struggles, watches from the sidelines.

Winner of the 2001 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her bestselling novel, Skins, in Texas Sarah Hay has written compellingly of the ruthless nature of this country and the fragility of the people trying to force their will upon it. aut and powerful story of the land and the past and desire. A novel of place, history and our relationship with the land, it tells of the extremity and ruthlessness of this country and the way in which it constantly reminds us of the fragility of our place on it.