Close to Home

Orphaned at thirteen, Charlie Anderson has been on her own for half her life. Not that she minds - she has her work as a vet and most days that's enough. Most days. But when she's sent to a small town on the New South Wales coast to investigate a possible outbreak of the deadly Hendra virus, Charlie finds herself torn between the haunting memories of her past, her dedication to the job and her attraction to a handsome local.

Travelling to Naringup means coming face to face with what is left of her dysfunctional family - her cousin Emma, who begged Charlie not to leave all those years ago, and her aunt Hazel, who let her go without a backwards glance. But it also means relying on the kindness of strangers and, when she meets local park ranger Joel Drummond, opening her heart to the possibility of something more ...

As tensions in the country town rise, can Charlie reconcile with the past and find herself a new future in the town she left so long ago?

About the Author

Pamela is a writer and teacher whose love of books has taken her from a career as a secondary school English teacher to a writer of Australian rural fiction. Her first novel, Blackwattle Lake, was published in 2012 after being selected as part of the Queensland Writers Centre/Hachette Manuscript Development Program. Essie's Way was published in 2013, and Close to Home will follow in 2015.

Pamela teaches creative writing through her business, Justwrite Publishing and especially loves encouraging beginning writers. She is proud to be a Writer Ambassador for Room to Read, a global organisation that promotes literacy and gender equality in developing countries. A passionate horserider, Pamela divides her time between her home in the southern suburbs of Sydney and her 'other' home on the south coast of New South Wales.