
WHEN talented but enigmatic musician Ned Chisholm drops out of mainstream life and into the rainforested hinterland of Far North Queensland, declaring he’s unable to return home attend a ceremony in his late father’s honour, his younger sister is determined to find a way to change his mind. Leaving behind a job in tourism, a devoted fiancé and a recently widowed mother in fictitious Tennyson in Central Victoria, Bella takes a long-overdue break from her nine-to-five routine and on the spur of the moment flies to Cairns.
Ned is nowhere to be found, however – at least, not initially. Not deterred, Bella discovers that a loose trail of evidence leads four hours further up the road to Cooktown, where she at last locates not only the elusive Ned but also a cast of warm and welcoming long-term residents.
Despite tension over the imminent memorial event, the siblings spend a blissful few days reconnecting at an isolated and exotically beautiful bushland property. But is this seemingly-idyllic tropical lifestyle actually too good to be true?
One of Australia’s most prolific and enduring authors of fiction, Di Morrissey is known for the meticulously detailed settings of her novels and the depth of characterisation that injects colour and movement into these plots.
In Rain Music she combines both to bring to life for readers the entrancing sights, sounds and scents of the country’s most northerly strip of land, Cape York, and introduce a representative cross-section of the down-to-earth locals who live there. The addition of historical information and evocative descriptions of the region – including some of its lesser-known parts – makes this book an entertaining incidental guide to the Cape.
Morrissey’s storyline is simultaneously heartwarming, inspiring and gripping, with car crashes, break-ins, abductions and emotional confrontations interspersed with the more tender aspects of an engaging family adventure.