The Reporter
is a story about survival
Journalist Abel Richards investigates the disappearance of a farm woman from a small town on the edge of Dartmoor. Climate change is starting to bite, the hill farms are going out of business and shady corporate players eye the high ground, but another idea has just begun to take shape ...
Abel Richards is from Western Australia, the son of a white gun shearer and a smart Wongutha woman. On graduating, he lands a job on the other side of the world, working as a reporter in Devon. When farm woman Olive Gladfield disappears, Abel pursues the story.
Lynch Property buys up bankrupt farms and strips the land assets before selling the properties on again. The company offers Abel the chance to get his work in the national papers. All he has to do is write compelling copy that will persuade local farmers to sell the high ground.
But Abel finds himself drawn to the ordinary people of this rural community. Or not so ordinary. What are their plans for survival in the face of climate change? The answer won’t become clear until he can find out what happened to Olive Gladfield …
Thank You
Thank you, Wangkatja Tjungula Aboriginal Corporation and the Mount Margaret Remote Community School, representatives of the Wongutha people, including elders and high schoolers, who are checking that reference in the book to their culture is both accurate and respectful.
Thank You also to Ellie at NTSG and to the State Library of w Australia in Perth, for helping me find the right people to ask.
And Thank You Arkbound, based out of Bristol and Glasgow, a young and multicultural publishing company, with a strong environmental ethos. It's great to be working with them.
