The Sunken Road

At the height of the Great Depression, with farmers walking off the land and the city's creeks lined with kerosene-tin shanties, a young mother is taken by a shark in the shallows at Henley Beach. Her grieving husband flees north with his baby son to the town of Pandowie, far from the treacherous ocean. In time, the boy will have a daughter: the wilful auburn-haired Anna Tolley.

This moving, powerful novel is at once the story of a region, a town and a people - and of one of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction. Widely acclaimed when it was first published, The Sunken Road is Garry Disher's proudest achievement.