A Far-flung Life by ML Stedman

I remember really enjoying ML Stedman’s first novel, The Light Between Oceans, which I read when it was published in 2012. It’s been a fourteen year wait for her second book, but I’m pleased to say that it was definitely worth waiting for! Like the first book, which followed the lonely lives of a lighthouse keeper and his wife, A Far-flung Life (as the title suggests) is set in another remote location – a sheep station in rural Western Australia. The novel opens on a hot summer’s day in January 1958 with Phil MacBride and his two sons, twenty-two-year-old Warren and eighteen-year-old Matt, on their way to a meeting in the nearest town – a journey that takes hours due to the vastness of the landscape. Phil’s wife, Lorna MacBride, is waiting at home on the family sheep station, Meredith Downs, with their daughter, Rosie, unaware that a terrible tragedy is taking place on the road – a kangaroo has jumped in front of the MacBride’s truck, causing an accident in which Phil and Warren are…