The story is set in a fictional market town on the edge of Dartmoor. Abel Richards is the new reporter for the Mid Devon Post. He grew up on a sheep station in the Australian outback and is of indigenous descent.
At his side is his Australian herding dog, Mrs Tinney, on his shoulder, a tattoo. The design is inherited from his mother Junie, a Wangkatja woman who married a white gun shearer called Pete Richards. Abel also carries with him a deep understanding of what it feels like to belong to a piece of land.
When Abel’s editor asks him to report on the disappearance of widowed farmer Olive Gladfield, the mystery takes him into the heart of a long established and fiercely independent rural community. Here the hill farmers still move their livestock with horses and live by the seasons, but rural life is strained by low incomes and the Gladfield’s farm lies empty. In the old mill he meets Ivy Miles and catches snippets of radical talk of independence and of ancient trade routes. Meanwhile distant supermarket chains and property dealers closer to home are looking for land in Devon. They see pound signs in the face of climate change and impending food scarcity. They want the high ground.
On a dark night, Abel is taken to an island up north, where he will find out what really lies behind the Gladfield mystery.
Background to The Reporter
Author Rachel Francis has previously lived and worked on north Dartmoor as pony trek leader and as part of a farming family. She’s also got creative bones, loves writing and is inspired by books such as: The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, Cloud Howe by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun; and by the life and work of M.K. Gandhi.
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In Gandhi’s plan for India, he envisaged wealth trickling up from the farms and villages … a decentralised India, with independence restored to every village across the Indian subcontinent. The spinning wheel at the centre of India’s flag represents self-reliance and self-rule, Swadeshi and Swaraj. This is an idea that inspired Rachel and has found its way into her writing.
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The story of THE REPORTER is written for people everywhere who still love to work outside and with the land, who love the seasons, who love to live their best life without a boss and to involve their children and to pass their way of life on. The story asks how do we save these valued ways of life in the modern world?
Excerpt ~ Opening page
​“There are moments that can change your life,” Junie told him.
Abel had a rucksack, passport, tickets and his laptop. He had the dog, Mrs. Tinney. His father was scrubbed up and wearing clean jeans and a new jumper, keys to the truck in his hand.
“Coming then Abe?” Pete said, climbing into the driver’s seat.
He pulled up the sleeve of his tee shirt enough for Junie to see his shoulder and she ran her finger around the shape of the tattoo, but said nothing.
“See you mum.” He turned and jumped up next to his father.
The truck pulled out the yard. Junie Richards watched them disappear up the dirt track, until all she could see was a cloud of red dust swirling across the Australian bush.
On the other side of the world, just before dawn, a man rode out on a horse. Nobody saw him leave the farm, apart from a handsome she-fox, slinking back home along the side of the Windridge. She felt hoof beats through the ground, she recognised the dark, rooty smell of horse sweat, she heard the creak of leather and she paused when the horse pulled up at the old shepherd’s cottage. The vixen was about to move off, when she heard the thud of a man’s boots hitting the ground. She crouched. Now she heard voices. A light went out and a door closed and moments later the horse set off again at a jog trot, two riders up. They turned down the sandy track to the river bridge and the man’s voice echoed across the hillside.
“Steady now horse.”
The horse was still fighting for its head as it crossed the bridge and broke into a gallop, heading out towards Wilson’s Ledge. The vixen raised her head, the moor was silent again. She melted away into the undergrowth.
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