Wimmera Gold — Peter Corris

Lying on a blanket beside a smoking camp fire was an irregularly shaped nugget of gold, about the size and roughly the shape of a large marrow. Mount Perfect Ranges, western Victoria, 1872. Henry Fanshaw has stumbled upon one of the largest nuggets ever found in the colony. But it isn't on his land and Fanshaw's troubles are only just beginning. The gold is stolen and Fanshaw, not able to approach the law, calls upon the services of John ‘Black' Perry, a touring pugilist, sharpshooter and horseman, to track the thieves. Wimmera Gold is a compelling manhunt of a novel. More than that, it is a novel rich in character and incident, with firebrand pastors, Aboriginal societies on the verge of extinction, and entrepreneurs and opportunists at every turn â€" it chronicles the fortunes of three quite different societies as they struggle towards a sense of identity. Wimmera Gold also tells the story of three of the most memorable and most driven characters to appear in Peter Corris's fiction: ‘Black' Perry himself, in fact a scholar and a gentleman, marginalised by his colour; Daniel Bracken, Irish lawyer hiding in the colonies after becoming unwillingly involved in Home Rule politics; and Wesley Lincoln, drifter from Snakehole, Texas, victim of circumstance and the winds of change, but hauntingly if pragmatically ethical. ‘Peter Corris is undoubtedly one of Australia's top storytellers...a substantial and compelling read' SUNDAY MAIL ‘Reinforces Corris's reputation as a master Storyteller' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH