The Wounded Sinner is the name of an old, decaying house which has been in the Andrews family for generations. Henderson personifies it as a dying being with hard, dry skin of paint peeling away, and loose window panes rattling in shrunken gums. The first inhabitant, Nathaniel Andrews, was an unrepentant rake, so Reverend Stone called him a ‘wounded sinner’ in need of God’s redemption.

His great-grandson Archie still lives in the house. He’s old, dying and crotchety. His son Matthew has vowed never to put him in a nursing home. But Matthew has to leave his wife and five children in Leonora, a town of past gold rushes on the edge of the desert, for three weeks each month to travel to Perth to care for his father. Henderson describes the landscape sensuously.

The book explores themes about the problems of ageing, responsibility for the elderly and the loss of their freedom of choice. Death itself is personified as it waits to claim its own and the characters discuss death and the purpose of life in a poignant but often humorous vein.

Jeanie is Indigenous, born in Leonora but raised by a white Australian couple. Her daughter challenges her mother’s sense of reality, calling her a ‘coconut’ – dark on the outside but white on the inside. Ben Poulson, an important ‘fixer’ in the town, is a pig-headed, chauvinistic racist living in Leonora to escape some sordid past that is still chasing him.The story increases in tension and suspense for each character as the complex machinations of his actions hunt them down.

This book highlights the importance of recognising the disparity of life in Australia.

Reviewed by Judith Grace