Publisher's Synopsis
The wind, a restless spirit born in the vast emptiness beyond the horizon, whispered secrets through the ancient gums. It carried the scent of sun-baked earth and the faint, persistent hum of cicadas, a rhythm as old as the continent itself. Beneath the endless expanse of a sky bruised with the colours of twilight, the red dust swirled, a timeless dance that had witnessed the rise and fall of seasons, the ebb and flow of life for millennia.
Here, in the heart of the Australian outback, the land spoke a language understood not through words, but through the subtle shifts in light and shadow, the silent stories etched into the weathered rock faces, the deep, resonant pulse that throbbed beneath the surface. It was a language Lucy Hayes had once dismissed as primitive, a stark contrast to the sharp, decisive pronouncements of the city she called home.
She had come seeking something tangible, a piece of herself she hadn't even known was missing. The city had offered ambition, a glittering promise of success, but it had also stripped away the quiet knowing that resonated in the soul of this ancient land. It had deafened her to the whispers carried on the wind, blinded her to the stories written in the dust.
He had been a part of that silent language, a man carved from the very landscape, his eyes the colour of the endless sky after rain, his touch as grounded and enduring as the ancient rocks beneath their feet. Andrew McGregor. He hadn't spoken in the clipped tones of boardrooms or the hurried jargon of deals. He had communicated through a shared gaze across a crackling fire, the comfortable silence of a star-dusted night, the unspoken understanding that bloomed in the vast emptiness between them.
But the demands of her other life, the siren call of ambition, had deafened her to his quiet language, had led her to believe that the answers lay in the clamour of the city. She had chosen the sharp edges of steel and glass over the soft curve of the horizon, the fleeting applause of colleagues over the enduring connection to this land and the man who belonged to it.
Now, the wind carried a different kind of whisper, a haunting echo of choices made and a yearning for something lost. The red dust, once a barrier, now felt like a homing beacon, pulling her back to a place where the silence held more truth than any spoken word.
The land held the answer, she knew it now. Not in grand pronouncements or easy solutions, but in the slow, patient unfolding of seasons, in the enduring strength of connection, in the willingness to listen to the unspoken language of the heart and the earth. The journey back was fraught with uncertainty, the path to forgiveness shrouded in dust and doubt. But beneath the vast, unforgiving sky, a seed of hope had been planted, a belief that in the heart of the outback, amidst the ancient whispers of the land, a new beginning might just take root.
