When the storm breaks at Moonbroch Station, Jamie and Willis's lives are changed in ways more profound than they ever could have imagined.
After the Flood explores loyalty and the tensions and complexities of abiding relationships. This gripping portrayal of how we cope with grief and trauma is as uplifting as it is thought-provoking.
When Jamie's sister dies from leukaemia, his family collapses under the weight of their loss and he is left in the care of Willis—an eighteen-year-old girl from Sydney who carries her own quiet devastation. Dismissed and diminished by the world, she arrives believing she is worthless, yet slowly begins to form a tentative, life-changing bond with Jamie.
Their delicate connection is threatened when an older couple arrives, intent on taking control—not only of Jamie’s care, but of Moonbroch Station, his family’s home.
Told across two timelines—childhood on an isolated station in outback Queensland, and twenty-five years later—After the Flood traces the enduring impact of loss and the ways it shapes identity, love, and belonging. As Jamie and Willis navigate lives still shadowed by grief, they are drawn back together, ultimately creating something new: a family forged through hardship, healing, and hope.
Jess M, Amazon
Captivating storytelling that had me guessing all the way through. I couldn’t put the book down. Loved it!!
From the Author
After the Flood began as a short story inspired by a young boarder at a school where I was teaching, who was carrying the grief of losing his sister to cancer. I created the character Jamie as a way of exploring what such a profound loss might feel like for a child. Then I began to wonder what might happen if Jamie’s world collided with someone else’s—someone older and shaped by a different kind of grief.
Willis took time to emerge from the shadows of my imagination, but as I came to know her, my writing process began to change. Bit by bit, I surrendered control of the narrative and allowed Jamie, Willis, and the other characters in the book to tell their story. What unfolded surprised me. The story stretched far beyond the flooded creek on Moonbroch Station and one of the most poignant moments comes twenty-five years later when Jamie and Willis finally find their way back to each other and reconcile their past.
The ‘flood’ is loosely based on the Charleville Floods of 1990 and Moonbroch Station is modelled on a station in Southwest Queensland where I lived during my teens. I have a strong connection to this landscape—its beauty and isolation, the vagaries of its weather and the quiet resilience it demands—and to Southeast Queensland where I now live and where most of adult Jamie and adult Willis’s stories take place.
Even now, I have never tired of these characters. I love them. In many ways, they feel like family—and I hope you might come to love them too.
Are you interested in buying a copy of After the Flood?
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Both books are available for purchase from Amazon in paperback and Kindle format. Alternatively, if your address is in Australia, you can purchase a paperback copy directly from me for $35 ($55 for two) including postage. If you would like to order directly from me, please reach out.