Texas
Sarah Hay
Texas
Sarah Hay
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.
Review
Sally Keighery, Program Coordinator of CAE Book Groups
Fans of 2001 Vogel winner Sarah Hay will be pleased to learn that her second novel has a distinctly Australian flavour. Set on a remote Kimberly cattle station during the 1980s, Texas charts the lives of third generation farmers Susannah and John, struggling to keep their marriage afloat and somehow make a go of improving the station’s fortunes. In response to his wife’s increasing loneliness, John hires a jillaroo. Enter English backpacker Laura, who takes to the heat and dust like a duck to water and is soon sharing her swag with charismatic Aboriginal stockman, Texas. As their affair blossoms, Susannah succumbs to mean-spiritedness, making a friendship between the two women almost impossible. Surely the romance cannot last? Far from a light-hearted love story, Texas is a timely meditation on Australian history exploring racism, the stolen generations and the link between land and identity. As the ‘build up’ breaks, Hay leaves us with the image of Susannah and Laura staring out at the shimmering surface of an enormous man-made dam. One woman will leave and one will stay, but readers are left to question which of them was brave enough to take the plunge into unknown territory.
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