No country for girls by Emma Styles

Charlie, hot-headed and street-wise, and Nao well-off and university-educated seem an unlikely pair, but they are on the run, bound together in an escalating series of law-breaking escapades.

One evening 17 year-old Charlie comes home to find a distressed young woman, Nao, on her doorstep, pleading for a place to stay. Inside, they find Charlie’s sister Geena’s drop-kick boyfriend Daryl waiting for Charlie, and demanding the return of the gold bar that he accuses her of stealing.

Within the first chapter we have Daryl dead, and Nao desperate to hide a secret. From there, events spiral and the two girls are forced to take extreme measures to try to stay one step ahead of people out to get them, and their duffle-bag of gold. Styles has written a fast-paced crime adventure with two mismatched, but gutsy heroines barrelling in stolen vehicles through the WA outback. Her descriptions of the heat, dust and sheer distances are vivid, and compliment the tensions of the plot, while the references to mining, the stolen generation, land rights and Aboriginal cultural knowledge anchor it as a contemporary Australian story.  

The story in told in chapters alternating between Charlie, Nao and Geena’s points of view, and the tension is heightened as the unsavoury connections between them are uncovered. Despite Nao’s privilege, her absent mother and controlling step-father have made life increasingly difficult for her, while Charlie’s strained relationship with her father is mitigated by the fiercely loyal bond she and Geena share.

Not much is missing in this outback adventure; several murders, physical assaults, abduction, a crooked cop and his mates, stolen gold, car chases, a tracking device, and a smattering of sexual tension make for a riveting read, as the girls make decisions born of desperation, and begrudgingly begin to look out for each other.

Themes: Outback Australia, Friendship, Crime, Adventure, Violence.

Margaret Crohn