At Cedar Flat, somewhere on the North Coast of New South Wales, Murray Reynolds, an engineer turned day trader, is renting a lodge in a failed eco-tourism development.
His wife Julia, unwilling to abandon her career in the city, encourages Murray to take responsibility for their daughter Pim, a withdrawn teenager with few life skills.
The two are befriended by their neighbour Laura, to whom Pim looks for support in the face of the unsettling environment of their new home and her own lack of practical knowledge.
Seeking to discover why the development never succeeded, Murray hears conflicting tales of timber getters, cattlemen, racial injustice and the consequences of a century-old shipwreck. Meanwhile, out in the commercial world, a global crisis is gathering pace.
While Pim gains confidence from her new school friends, she is oppressed by the need to free their property from a historic curse stemming from massacres and dispossession of the area’s indigenous inhabitants, with whose situation she has come to identify.
In their search for the true story of Cedar Flat, both Murray and Pim find new insights and new strengths, which bring positive change to their relationships with one another, and also with Julia.
Living By My Wits: Literary works by Alex Jones 