This is an authentic, entertaining, sometimes shocking, often funny, yarn from Outback Australia. Tom and Gidgee, best mates, toil and laugh together for decades, in the shearing sheds and stockyards of the challenging, semi-arid Western Division. Constantly tested by extremes of Nature, their huge capacity for both work and laughter helps them cope with everything that’s thrown at them. They support each other through personal tragedies. When Gidgee is wrongly imprisoned, Tom saves his soul and his future. When Tom, tough and funny, is driven to become a homicidal madman, through treachery from within his family, Gidgee will sacrifice himself to save his mate from going to jail. The humour features the coarse, often ribald yarns and jokes of the stockyards and shearing sheds, in an era when that was a man’s world, and the chauvo attitudes which were normal then, were balanced by chivalry. This is a bloke’s book, that will also be thoroughly enjoyed by broad-minded women.