Beyond the Black Stump

If somewhere is 'beyond the black stump' it means it is in the deepest darkest wilds of the Australian outback. This is the sun-baked setting for Nevil Shute's novel of a romance that is tested by the differences between two young people's home lives. Stanton Laird is sent from his small town in America to work in a remote outpost in Western Australia. While out there he befriends the unconventional Regan family and falls in love with the daughter Mollie. However, when Mollie travels to America to visit him the couple realise that their differences in background make their plans for a future together hard to realise.

The novel fascinates in its record of the hazards and joys shared by a rich and rewarding company of personalities, The best novel its author has written for some time...his characters...are carved out with fine bold strokes, and the red dust of his million-acre ranch fairly gets in your throat, That shattering, unaffected, literary style of his is wholly deceptive...is, in fact, masterly, A brilliantly descriptive writer, a master of suspense

Nevil Shute was born on 17 January 1899 in Ealing, London. After attending the Dragon School and Shrewsbury School, he studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an aeronautical engineer and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they went on to have two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), No Highway (1948), A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957).