Drum Roll Please…
It’s here – the fourth book in my Coorah Creek series.
Little Girl Lost takes us back to Coorah Creek, where we meet up with Sergeant Max, Trish at the pub, Dr Adam and Dan the park ranger… all our old friends. And there are some new faces in town too.
I guess I should warn you … this book is going to make you cry. In a good way. At least, I hope it does because, it made me cry as I wrote it.
Little Girl Lost is inspired by a song that has haunted me since I was a small girl. That song always brings a tear to my eye..
The song is called Little Boy Lost.
It tells the true story of a boy called Seven Walls, who went missing in 1960, in the New England Ranges of New South Wales. He was four years old, and just wandered away from his father while they were out working on their property. For the next four days, the biggest search in Australian history was mounted. They found Steven alive and well. The first words he said to his rescuers were – ‘Where’s my Daddy?’ You can read the story in this newspaper archive.
Soon after, Johnny Ashcroft released the song. You can find it on You Tube. It is one of the biggest hits in Australian music – bigger even than ‘The Pub With No beer’ and ‘Tie me Kangaroo Down Sport’.
I remember listening to the song as a child and thinking how terrified I would be if I was lost in the bush – which was always a possibility, living where I did.
As a journalist many years later, I reported on searches for people who had become lost in the wilder parts of Queensland and northern New South Wales, not all that far from the site of the search for Steven Walls. Sometimes those searches had happy endings. Other times they did not.
And later still I got to thinking that there are many different ways to be lost… and sometimes you can be lost even though you know exactly where you are.
That’s where this book began its life.
It was lovely to return to Coorah Creek as I wrote this. The town feels like home to me. The people who live there are my friends.
It’s spring in the Creek – and there’s a new face in town – a red headed girl with black leathers and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Policeman Max Delany has more than just a professional interest in Tia Walsh and the past she is running away from.
The storekeeper’s daughter Sarah Travers is back after a few years away in the big city. When she was a kid, she found a knight in shining armour behind the wheel of a road train travelling the Mt Isa Road. Now she is in need of a knight, but Pete Rankin’s armour has been tarnished.
Then a little girl goes missing in the Tyangi Crossing National Park just outside the town, and the whole town comes together to search for her.
Can Max help three lost girls find their way home?
All right – no spoilers here. There’s more about Little Girl Lost and the other Coorah Creek novels on my books page, and the e-book of Little Girl Lost is now available for pre-order. It will be officially released on August 2nd.
I loved writing this book. I do hope you will love reading it… and if you find yourself reaching for the tissues, let me know.
