Daniel O’Callaghan, an ex-combat dog handler, decides that a long road trip might be the answer to his quest for peace, purpose and a place of his own.
In the outback township of Greenvale, Daniel meets Finneen Murphy under fiery circumstances at the local servo. Their frosty relationship eases when Daniel helps her rescue an abused Kelpie, an action which brings unexpected repercussions. Together, he and Finneen must forge a relationship built on trust while dealing with a Kelpie that is not at all what she appears to be.
Authentic Australian settings, vivid characters, rich imagery, gripping, action-packed, page-turning tension, humour and a heart-break hero, make All That He Is an unforgettable story.
Queenslander, Jill Staunton, was born into a farming family. As a child, she was raised west of Rockhampton near Baralaba on a Hereford cattle and cotton property memorable for its brown snakes, goats and bales of wispy cotton.
Many school holidays were spent on her grandparents’ dairy, sheep and crop farm. Here, her grandfather taught her to align fence posts by eye and to offside in the dairy and shearing shed whilst her grandmother taught her to stew apricots fresh from the orchard. The fun was in eating the fruit then counting the seeds to her grandmother’s rhymes – tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, silk, satin, cotton, rags.
As a teenager, Jill spent time on Yaramulla, the ironbark and speargrass Brahman cattle property her parents owned (later declared a national park and the site of the Undara Lava Tubes) then on Boonamin, a property where her parents bred Brangus cattle.
Although she left the outback to teach English and History, Jill attributes her love of language to her grandmother and mother and her love of writing Outback fiction, Australian historical romance and poetry to her rural Australian upbringing. Jill resides in Townsville with her husband.