Ali Lewis

Ali Lewis was born in rural North Yorkshire in 1976, the second of three children.

Being cast as Rose Herriot in the final series of All Creatures Great and Small opened the door to a new world – Ali got to miss school, watch Top of the Pops being filmed, and taste her first champagne. But at seventeen, an accident caused her to fracture two vertebrae and spend months in hospital. Despite missing much schooling, she passed her A-levels and went on to university.

After graduating, she returned to North Yorkshire to a career in journalism, then in 2002 she left to travel the world. Starting in India, she moved through Asia to Australia: it was here, working on an outback cattle station, that she found the inspiration for her first novel, Everybody Jam.Since her return, Ali worked as a features writer and now has moved on to work in public relations.

It's nearly time for the annual muster on the Dawsons' isolated cattle station. But this year, everything is different. Something is hanging in the air, something nobody wants to talk about. Danny's older brother Jonny has recently died, and since then everything has been upside down. His parents are barely communicating, and his fourteen-year-old sister, Sissy is pregnant and won't tell anyone who the father is.

It seems like nobody wants to think about the past, so Danny tries not to, either. Instead he devotes himself to Buzz, the camel calf he’s trying to train. Danny loses himself in daydreams of being a great stockman. He’d like to show his family what he’s made of – and he could, if anyone would just pay him some attention.

And then the one person who does is the most unlikely candidate. An English house girl – a 'pom' – is hired to help with the muster. Of course, Liz doesn't know the first thing about the outback, about cattle or about musters. She doesn’t even know about Jonny, so it wasn't really her fault... But even cruel mistakes can sometimes open doors: maybe Liz and Danny are more alike than they realise.

Still, even with Liz and Buzz to help him, Danny is feeling the pressure. Next year he'll be sent away to boarding school: the muster is his last chance to show his family that he can be the stockman Jonny was. Danny knows it's up to him to fill that hole. And what if he can't? How will his broken family ever be fixed? Fate doesn't seem to be on his side. Catastrophe threatens when a terrible drought begins to spread, and there´s a shock from Sissy, which pushes the family to breaking point...