In the bush of 1920s New South Wales in Australia, readers observe a young woman digging by a river and then running for the hills. Her story unfolds slowly, in fractured time and brief views, in The Untold, a dreamy debut novel by Courtney Collins based on the life of legendary Australian wild woman Jessie Hickman.
Jessie left home at 12 to join the circus, then had a mostly successful career rustling horses. At age 21, she was convicted for stealing two chickens. Upon her release from prison, she fell in with a rancher who forced her back into a life of crime and a profoundly miserable, violent marriage. Her latest traumas have now sent her, and her beloved horse, Houdini, crashing up a mountain in the driving rain.
Among the gangs of men pursuing her are a former lover--an Aboriginal tracker--and a police sergeant, purportedly working together but each unclear which side he's really on. As the reader is increasingly drawn into the story, The Untold rushes precipitously toward a heady convergence among Jessie, Houdini, the gangs and the two men with more personal business to conduct.
The Untold is startling, lyrical and untamed, with a firm emphasis on survival and redemption and a full array of improbably charming characters (the biggest surprise of all is the narrator's role in Jessie's story)--none with an unstoried past but few as feral as Jessie herself. The reader will be as exhilarated as the protagonist by her struggles, and quite possibly come up gasping for air. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia