Bongers, Christine: Dust.

** BONGERS, Christine Dust Woolshed, 2009 232pp $17.95 pbk ISBN 9781741664461 SCIS 1418442

In the heat of Queensland the dust is all pervasive. Cecilia lives on a farm with her parents and five brothers--and her mum is again pregnant. When the two Kapernicky girls move in next door they are ostracized for their strange behaviour, and fail to make friends at the local school. Life for Cecilia consists largely of battles and dares with her brother Punk (resulting in frequent trips to the doctor), and avoiding confession, so she doesn't want the new girls complicating things. The adults might refer to the Kapemicky's family's troubles, but their kids are quite unaware of the disturbing events that underlie their behaviour. It is the 1970s, and child abuse is not a topic most children have been exposed to.

The story entwines the somewhat chaotic, but loving, life of Cecilia's family with sinister clues as to life on the adjacent farm, and is book-ended by two chapters in which the adult Cecilia drags her own teenage children to a country funeral, in order to lay the ghosts of the past. The subject of abuse is not made explicit, but it is potentially disturbing. The book is therefore targeted at mature readers.

** Book by an Australian author or illustrator