Ever since Dad went off the deep end and decided he didn't need to work anymore - insisting the Lord would provide - Satchel O'Rye has felt stuck for life in his dying country town. A high school dropout drifting from one small carpentry job to the next, Satchel can see nothing beyond his own dreary duty to help keep the family afloat. But things start to change when he spies a strange doglike animal at a nearby mountain - and mentions the fact to Chelsea Piper, an awkward young woman considered the local pariah. Could the animal he saw be a Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial thought to be extinct? And if they found it again, could it give them both a new chance at life?

A mesmerizing tale of a young man fighting his future, a young woman fighting her past and a mysterious creature who teaches them something about survival by an international award-winning author and the recipient of the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Prize.

Sonya Hartnett is the award-winning author of many novels for teens and young adults, inlcuding Thursday's Child, winner of the Guardian Children's Book Award; What the Birds See, winner of the Age Book of the Year in Australia; Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf; The Ghost's Child and The Silver Donkey, as well as a number of books for younger readers. In 2008, Sonya was awarded the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for her body of work. She lives in Australia.