This author is an Australian emergency physician working at an inner-city Perth hospital, far removed from the red dust and tragedy that surrounds Wittenoom, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

It’s an odd book, with alternate chapters portraying each of two doctors. One, an Englishman, fleeing a young patient’s death, in 1966 comes to Wittenoom, an asbestos-mining town, now notorious in the health history of Australia. The mine and the town closed late that year.

The other is a woman doctor, sent to Port Hedland hospital from Perth after the death of one of her patients. Fleeing her past she resigns from the hospital in that mining export town in WA’s north and drives inland, half-planning to visit Karijini National Park, but takes a turnoff to the almost deserted town of Wittenoom.

Consequences of medical errors and subsequent self-doubts by each doctor are paramount in this story. Details of the death of the Englishman’s patient emerge frustratingly slowly, with no definite cause.

The woman doctor suppresses painful memories of her fall from grace until they are revealed close to the end of the novel.

The English doctor in the 1960s is dealing with a belligerent mine management, his belief that asbestos-mining is endangering the health of its employees, and drastic emergencies in the town, but the end of his story needs a large suspension of disbelief from the reader.

Without revealing too much, it is the stuff of myths and legends, even time travel. And just to thoroughly confound the reader, it turns out one doctor is writing about the other. So, which one is more real, in this work of fiction based on a hideous reality.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville