'The secret things I knew about my mum, and the things that everyone knew, had played in my mind for some time, since I was real little, I guess. When I was small, all around me seemed to flow, gentle and sweet like the edge of the creek. Then my brothers grew too large to be hemmed in, and Sophie met a bloke, moved out and had babies, and things became harder.

The older I got the louder those secret things inside me became, all those knowns and unknowns, until-apart from Anja-I'd rather talk to animals than people.'

Innocent and unworldly, Mema is still living at home with her mother on a remote, lush hinterland property. It is a small, confined, simple sort of life, and Mema is content with it.

One day, during a heavy downpour, Mema saves a stranger from the raging creek. She takes him into her family home, where marooned by rising floods, he has to stay until the waters recede. His sudden presence is unsettling-for Mema, her mother and her wild friend Anja-but slowly he opens the door to a world of beckoning possibilities that threaten to sweep Mema into the deep.