She thought of Billy, and how he would never say 'Bye, beautiful' to someone like her, that likely no one would ever say anything like that to her in her life, and how she could not do anything to change any of it.

Sandy does not know if she would fit in anywhere, but she feels like a complete outsider in this hot wheatbelt town where her policeman father has just been transferred.

And then she meets Billy, the part-Aboriginal mechanic's apprentice and town heart-throb. Sandy's feelings for him are overwhelming her, but she is about to find out that her greatest rival is her own sister, the alluring, confident Marianne.

Set in Western Australia in the 1960s, this is a story of secrets and heartbreak, of families and changing times, by rising star Julia Lawrinson.