Danny Dawson lives in the middle of the Australian outback. His older brother Jonny was killed in an accident last year but no-one ever talks about it. And now it's time for the annual muster. The biggest event of the year on the cattle station, and a time to sort the men from the boys. But this year things will be different: because Jonny's gone and Danny's determined to prove he can fill his brother's shoes; because their fourteen-year-old sister is pregnant; because it's getting hotter and hotter and the rains won't come; because cracks are beginning to show . . . When Danny's mum admits she can't cope, the family hires a housegirl to help out - a wide-eyed English backpacker. She doesn't have a clue what she's let herself in for. And neither do they.

Ali Lewis was born in rural North Yorkshire in 1976, the second of three children. Being cast as Rose Herriot in the final series ofAll Creatures Great and Smallopened the door to a new world. After graduating from university, she went into a career in journalism, then in 2002 she left to travel the world. It was in Australia, working on an outback cattle station, that she found the inspiration for her first novel,Everybody Jam.Since her return, Ali worked as a features writer and now has moved on to work in public relations.

'Everybody jam' is outback slang for apricot jam - because everybody likes it. But not everything in Danny Dawson's life is that sweet.