The Break (22 page)

Cate Sutherland deserves special thanks for her role in bringing this manuscript to the attention of Fremantle Press.

Thank you Ally Crimp for your wonderful design work, and Naama Amram, the proofreader's proofreader.

Fremantle Press staff have my enormous appreciation for their work in promoting me, selling my books, and managing everything else with such aplomb, including my impromptu visits to their office.

My special thanks to Susie Ormonde who answered all manner of questions (and some panicky text messages) about gardening in the south-west of Western Australia.

Thanks to my old boss George Williams for generously sharing his knowledge about newspaper reporting in the 1990s.

Stewart Dallas, thank you for answering every one of my questions about wind, swell and surfing, and for your constancy in our lives. Jerry and Pippa, you are the best fans a writing mum could have.

Mum and Dad, this one's for you. Thank you for everything.

Lines from Robert Drewe's
The Drowner
reproduced with permission of Penguin Group (Australia).

First published 2014 by

FREMANTLE PRESS

25 Quarry Street, Fremantle 6160

(PO Box 158, North Fremantle 6159)

Western Australia

www.fremantlepress.com.au

Also available as a print book.

Copyright © Deb Fitzpatrick, 2014

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Consultant editor Georgia Richter

Editor Amanda Curtin

Cover design Ally Crimp

Cover photograph Orien Harvey

Internal image from
The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus & Terror
by Sir James Clark Ross, courtesy of Western Australian Museum

Printed by Everbest Printing Company, China

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Fitzpatrick, Deb, author.

The break / Deb Fitzpatrick.

ISBN 9781922089649 (epub)

Life change events — Fiction.

Landslide — Western Australia — Gracetown — Fiction.

A823.4

Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts.

Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.