Jumaana Abdu in-conversation with Felicity Castagna

Amid a series of personal disasters, Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, retreat to rural New South Wales to make a new life. Aliyah manages to secure a run-down property and hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region’s imām.

During a storm, she drives past the town’s river and happens upon a childhood friend, Hana, who has been living a life of desperation. Aliyah takes her in and tries to navigate the indefinable relationships between both Hana and her farmhand. Tensions rise as Aliyah’s growing bond with Shep strains her devotion to Hana.

Finally, all are thrown together for a reckoning alongside Hana’s brother, Hashim, and Aliyah’s confidante, Billie – a local Kamilaroi midwife she met working at the hospital – while bushfires rage around them.

Jumaana Abdu is a Dal Stivens Award winner and an alumnus of the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program. Her work features in Thyme Travellers (Roseway Publishing), an international anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction. She has been published elsewhere in Kill Your Darlings, Westerly, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Liminal, Overland and Debris. During the day, she is a medical doctor.

Felicity Castagna won the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction for her novel, The Incredible Here and Now, which was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and adapted for the stage by the National Theatre of Parramatta. Her collection of short stories, Small Indiscretions, was named an Australian Book Review Book of the Year. Her most recent novel, No More Boats, was shortlisted for the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the 2018 Voss Literary Prize and the 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Multicultural Award.