When a stranger – not much older than Gemma, Vincent’s adolescent daughter – crashes her car on a blind corner at the base of Vincent and Gemma’s bush home, she lands in the town like a pebble in a still pool. The ripples reach right to the edges, leaving no one untouched. Told in the split perspectives of father and daughter, Jessie Cole’s narrative changes seamlessly from one to the other. Both voices are told with a clarity that is rare from a début author.

The claustrophobia of a small town provides not only the setting; it is a driving force in the story. There is a seething undercurrent of danger in the small talk that is bandied about at the pub and on the sidelines of soccer games; moments that are more powerful for their familiarity.

Gina, the stranger, embodies a state of shock so fully that she is difficult to understand. But this is unimportant. The feelings she evokes in others, from tenderness to blinding rage, cause a series of events that are difficult to predict. In Gemma, Cole captures a knowingness hidden under the skin of adolescence. Her father, Vincent, seems as new to the world as the daughter he loves. He worries that she will become one of the broken people too. This is a tender and heartfelt début.