Coming Rain

As always, Stephen Daisley writes blue collar men - in this case shearers in WA in the 1950s, so very very well. The young shearer Lew, his older mentor Painter Hayes, the farmer Drysdale, the station cook Jimmy and the dingo hunter Smith are all painted in delicate, intimate brush strokes that show the men as they are and also the forces that shape them.
Another trademark of Daisley's writing is the lack of punches he pulls when describing the realities of life. In Traitor and A Better Place, Daisley describes the horrors of war on the men that fought in them, and here those horrors are shown again in the PTSD that several characters live with and how that shapes their lives, but the realities of farming life, in the stark hardship of the arid areas of Western Australia are brutally described too.
The other main character in Coming Rain is a dingo bitch that is being tracked through the scrub because she killed a young sheep. She and Lew are similar in many ways - very smart and clever, but also young and vulnerable. This relationship was my favourite part of the book.
I love Daisley's brutal and uncompromising writing style very much and I look forward to reading many more.