Bird Country is a collection of stories that are steeped in the rural Australian landscape and the Australian psyche.

A boat trip in a squall to scatter the ashes of an old man, who was not loved.

A young father, driving his daughters home across grass plains, unable to tell them that their mother has died.

A speech that doesn't include the aching pain of trying to save a cousin's life.

A mother hiding her fugitive son in a cockatoo cage as the river rises.

A man pouring his life into finding the perfect stained glass after his wife has left him.

A woman longing for the right person to tell about her sister's death, while she works nightshift at a roadhouse.

The things we don't say and the relationships we yearn for hover between the lines of these moving and evocative stories, as do the smell and feel of the mud and grass plains, roads and roadhouses, and the pubs and kitchen tables of country life.

These are tales of love and loss, of friendship and betrayal, and of happiness and pain. Claire Aman is a strong new voice in Australian fiction.