In recent years Helen Fitzgerald rose to greater prominence thanks to the hit TV drama The Cry, based on her emotionally devastating psychological thriller, but the Glasgow-based Aussie storyteller has been tying readers in knots for more than a decade.

After several sparkling standalones set in Europe, ranging from explorations of social media shaming to a parole worker opening a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences when seeking justice, Fitzgerald ‘returns home’ in her superb new novel Ash Mountain. It’s a wonderful concoction of family drama, rural noir, and disaster thriller. Fran Collins reluctantly returns to Ash Mountain, a place she escaped from long ago, when life goes awry. A single mother who sees her teen daughter on weekends, Fran hates her city job, her relationship seems a goner, and her father had a stroke. As a rampaging bushfire approaches the town, old wounds are scratched open.

Who will survive?

Fitzgerald smoothly shifts readers back and forth across three timelines: the day of the fire, 30 years before the fire, and the 10 days leading up to the fire. Such a structure could easily stumble in lesser hands, but Fitzgerald nails it while building our care and fear for all the characters.

Ash Mountain is dark yet funny, emotional yet not bleak. A vivid, atmospheric tale from a master storyteller, that packs an emotional wallop.

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson