This novel will shock complacent middle class Australia of today.

In the early 1960s Peter Mooney innocently accepts a position as a paid footballer in the mining town of Mt Isa. He is soon caught up in one of the great industrial struggles of Australian history, a struggle which transfixed the nation.

Mooney is ill-prepared for this experience, his life driven by events no one can control, and an inner-being he can't control. Two women, one a strong catholic and the other of more practical virtue, play a major role in shaping his destiny.

So unfolds a story of great passion played out against the backdrop of the harsh yet strangely beautiful landscape of the Australian outback - an environment matched by the harsh and often brutal lifestyle of the people who lived and worked there.