Featured book this week is The Saddler Boys by Fiona Palmer

There’s an excerpt to read too…

Schoolteacher Natalie has always been a city girl. She has a handsome boyfriend and a family who give her only the best. But she craves her own space, and her own classroom, before settling down into the life she is expected to lead.

When Nat takes up a posting at a tiny school in remote Western Australia, it proves quite the culture shock, but she is soon welcomed by the swarm of inquisitive locals, particularly young student Billy and his intriguing single father, Drew.

As Nat’s school comes under threat of closure, and Billy’s estranged mother turns up out of the blue, Nat finds herself fighting for the township and battling with her heart.

Torn between her life in Perth and the new community that needs her, Nat must risk losing it all to find out what she’s really made of – and where she truly belongs.

 

Excerpt from The Saddler Boys by Fiona Palmer

Prologue

Peering out her car window, she waited and watched as kids piled onto orange school buses with bundles of energy. She scanned each face for likeness, for familiarity, for features she was trying hard to remember. But she had no clue if she’d ever spot him. Would she even be able to recognise him?

The buses pulled away from the school and she followed one in the direction she knew. It was weird being back here, in Lake Biddy – a tiny outback town in the middle of nowhere. And she wasn’t exaggerating; she meant tiny. A shop, a pub, a school and a few houses. It was all surrounded by empty paddocks and scrub. Being so isolated made her feel misplaced and slightly scared, like a flower petal blowing into the dry desert. Being here brought back waves of feelings she wasn’t used to, memories she didn’t want to remember, or deal with.

The large bus continued along the road and she kept following, knowing her boy must be on that bus. When it stopped at the familiar gate, she was overwhelmed with emotion. She reached for her cigarettes with shaky hands and quickly lit one, puffing away until the hit came.

She pulled over and waited for the bus to leave, then crept forward. A little boy with a large school bag walked to the bush on the left of the gate where a small tin shed was nestled. She watched him wheel out a tiny motorbike from the shed and start it. Could this really be him? He looked about the right age, but she was no expert.

He took off his school hat, and she noticed that his short clipped hair looked mousy blond. He put on his helmet. She cursed when she couldn’t see his face. Did she dare drive any closer? If he turned and saw her, what would he do? Approach her? Or run? Maybe she could tell him she was lost – or would she tell him the truth?

The boy roared his motorbike up the driveway, leaving a trail of dust behind.

It was probably for the best, she thought as she sucked the last bit of life out of her cigarette and lit up another one. She wasn’t quite ready yet. But soon. Soon she would be.

Chapter 1

Bugs smacked into Natalie’s windscreen, hindering her view as another dual-cab four-wheel drive sporting a big roo bar whooshed past her on the endless bitumen road. That made three four-wheel drives in a row, not to mention the massive trucks that barged past, blowing her across the road like a dead leaf in the wind. Add the wayward storm of rocks flicked up off the road every time she passed a big vehicle and her sleek car was taking a serious battering. Welcome to the country.

Natalie Wright glanced out her window into the wide-open paddocks that stretched for miles in yellows and browns against a vibrant blue sky. The vista was dotted with large gangly eucalypts, their leaves shimmering in the sun as if coated in glitter. Nat’s music played like a soundtrack to the scene before her. Actually, it made her want to search through her iPod for some Jimmy Barnes or Paul Kelly. The rural landscape seemed to evoke an Aussie yearning for something a little more rustic and raw. A smile grew on her face and she breathed in deeply, imagining she had her windows down and could literally smell the earthy, fresh countryside.

Was it the massive sky that made her feel so free? It stretched over her, uninterrupted except for one wispy, see-through cloud. Or was it the fact that she’d been driving for over three hours now, leaving the city with its bustling streets and compressed buildings so far behind? Nat tapped a manicured nail, painted in dusty rose, against the leather steering wheel.

This was her real first venture into the countryside. Sure, she’d driven down to Margaret River to taste the fabulous wines and flown up north to Broome, but never had she driven east towards the middle of Australia, where nothing seemed to live except pink-and-grey birds and bobtails that like to sunbake on the road. The land was so hot it shimmered, and Nat wondered if she’d be able to breathe the air in. Would her skin crackle and wrinkle after her year here?

A rusty metal sculpture of wheat stood proudly on the edge of the road, followed by two more, metres apart, before a sign for the township appeared. Two years ago, if someone had told her she’d be travelling to the outback to stay in Lake Biddy, population not even three hundred, she would have laughed and called them mad. Yet, here she was. Life had a funny way of turning the tables. She grinned to herself. Out here she’d have the freedom to make her own choices, and maybe along the way she’d find out just who Natalie Wright really was.

The Saddler Boys is available in eBook and paperback from all good retailers.
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Amazon Australia
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Read more about Fiona and her books on MEET FIONA PALMER

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