Burrawang, New South Wales, 1868. Patrick Kittrick has wagered everything on two hundred acres of raw Australian bush. He has bled for every cleared acre and every planted row. Now his neighbour, Mervyn Craddock, means to take it from him. When asking fails, Craddock reaches for darker methods, and behind him stands Louis Proctor, a man who fled England one step ahead of a murder charge. Jemma Craddock has spent twenty years learning to survive her father. She knows precisely what he is capable of. Now he intends to hand her to Proctor. She had resigned herself to having no choices left until Patrick Kittrick made the fatal mistake of treating her as though she had. Patrick knows Craddock will not stop until he is broken or gone. But Patrick Kittrick is his mother's son. And the Irish, as a rule, do not break easily…