Wife to Order

Lucy Walker is famous for her novels of Australian life, which have charmed readers throughout the world. A born storyteller, there is magic in her pen when she describes the great sheep and cattle stations of the West and North-west. She tells of the virile men who ride out "on the run" from dawn to dusk, and of the women who tend the homesteads and wait for their return. She describes vividly these isolated com-munities, with their vast acres of pasture and grazing ground, separated sometimes by hundreds of miles from their nearest neighbours. We feel the burning midday sun and revel in the coolness of the brilliant starlit nights; we are even conscious of the scent of burning gum leaves and the stirring of the horses in the shadows of the campfire. In this outstanding new novel of young Carey Fraser, left on the death of her father in the care of Oliver Reddin, owner of a prosperous neighbouring station, Lucy Walker gives us of her very best.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction, Romance. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.