Child protection worker Dana Gibson arrives in the sleepy rural town of Killarney with one goal in mind- locate the whereabouts of foster child Jayden Maloney and return him to care. What she isn’t anticipating is an unexpected attraction to her colleague’s younger brother Sean, or to become embroiled in their simmering family feud.

When criminal allegations surface against a member of the local parish and a police task force discovers an increase in drug trafficking across the border, Dana is forced to consider that Jayden’s disappearance is not simply a case of a teen on the run. To complicate matters further, torrential rain causes the Condamine River to break its banks, and the town gets cut off.

As Dana continues to ask questions, tensions peak with the rising flood waters and she soon realises that the tight-knit community is not all that it seems. Long-held secrets start to unravel and loyalties are questioned, forcing Dana to make a decision about who she can trust and how much she is willing to fight for what she believes in.

Nikki Mottram has a psychology degree from The University of Queensland and has worked in London and Australia in positions protecting and promoting the welfare of children at risk of harm. Her first book, Crows Nest, was published in 2023, and her work also appears in the Boroondara Literary Awards anthology. She has been shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize and the Hal Porter Short Story Competition. In 2018, she was the recipient of a Katharine Susannah Pritchard Writers’ Centre Fellowship. She grew up and resides in Toowoomba, and brings to her work an understanding of rural communities.