AustLit

'Sheryl McCorry grew up in the outback carrying crocodiles to school for show and tell. When she was 18 her family moved to Broome, and it was the first time she'd ever used a telephone or seen a television.

'A year later, only hours after being railroaded into marriage by a fast-talking Yank, Sheryl locked eyes with Bob McCorry, a drover and buffalo shooter. When her marriage ended after only a few months, they began a love affair that would last a lifetime and take them to the Kimberley's harshest frontiers.

Ben Wallymacher has always struggled to keep up with Francis. Friends from childhood, their lives diverge as they battle with the big questions - relationships, fathering, the limits of spontaneity, the usefulness of seventies obsessions like the 'human potential movement' - until they're drawn together again by Francis's elusive daughter, Piaf.

This ironic comic novel flits from the past to the present, weaving a tale of life's journey with some pretty interesting pit stops - geodesic domes, psychodrama and gurus, armed robbery and prison, New York and Fremantle, the Chelsea Hotel and Adele's B & B.

It's about an ordinary man trying not to make too much of a wally of himself.