A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman

This author had a hugely successful debut novel A Light between Oceans (2012) and has taken another fourteen years to publish A Far-Flung Life. The first was a heart-rending, emotional story set on a remote lighthouse station off the western Australian coast after World War One, of a childless couple who find a baby washed ashore.

Like the first novel, A Far-Flung Life addresses humans struggling to find a way forward through experiences of love and loss, grief and moral complexity. Again, like the first novel, this is a story set in an isolated and challenging landscape, this time in the dry and dusty vastness of a Western Australian sheep station, almost a million scrub and rock-covered acres broken only by the occasional dilapidated building, the broken-down remnants of old mine heads and a homestead. The isolation of living miles from anywhere, the never-ending cycle of mustering and shearing and making a life in this tough environment, shapes the lives of the family in this story.

The McBrides have weathered life here for several generations, but in 1958, a collision with a kangaroo crossing the path of their vehicle kills Phil McBride and Warwick, his teenage son and leaves Matt, the younger teenage son, seriously injured. Phil’s widow Lorna is left to manage the station, rambunctious teenage Rosie and damaged Matt at her side. Difficulties follow, with Matt struggling to cope with his changed circumstances and Rosie disappearing to return some months later with a newborn baby whose father she refuses to name.  

This is a story of loss, love, sacrifice and re-orientation as the baby Andy grows into a lively, curious nine-year-old. Mining exploration on the station brings Bonnie, a geologist who bonds with Andy over his love of rocks and brings light and companionship into Matt’s life.

But Matt has a secret, one which gets in the way. And so do others in this isolated community: the cheery, handsome English visitor, Miles whom Rosie falls for; the postmaster’s wife, who takes notes on local deaths and attends every funeral; the reclusive Pete, ex-Japanese prisoner-of-war and now the station’s kangaroo shooter; and even the cheerful Bonnie carry their own secrets. And Andy must build a life on the “forgetment” of not knowing who his father is.

And so, the lives of these people play out. Just as a sudden wind storm can change the face of the land, so a sudden unforeseen event can change the course of people’s lives. And as the grandfather clock steadfastly marks the passing of time, and the landscape is marked by “the stretching and the shrinking of the light”, characters weather the challenges they face. Brutal and terrible things happen, and yet people find a way to go on. Their struggles are told with compassion, and perspectives are rendered with a tender intimacy. The author knows these people, knows this landscape and breathes life into both, bringing us a powerfully moving saga of land and people.  Just as the vast landscape survives windstorms, the effects of sheep farming, and the inroads of mining, the scarred individual can doggedly persist and build a life.  Life can be built while leaving some things, like Andy’s parentage, as unknowns and leaving some things, like Jemima’s trees, unchanged. The land of Meredith Downs and the people for whom it is home, find a way to go on.

This is a beautifully written and carefully crafted tale which pulled me into its world, so that I cried for and cared for and believed in these people and this place.

Reviewed by: Clare Lyon     

Penguin