Oyster - Janette Turner Hospital

By cunning intention, and sometimes by discreet bribery, Outer Maroo has managed to keep itself off the map. And yet people do stumble into town, because the seduction of nowhere is hard to resist.

Opal draws most of them. The word itself is like a charm. You can stroke a word like opal. You can taste it. You can swallow it whole, raw and silky, like an oyster. And then Oyster can reel you in.

Two strangers reach an opal-mining town in Queensland's outback, searching for a stepdaughter and a son, who have mysteriously disappeared. There is a heavy, guilty feel to the hot, parched-dry town where the drinkers standing on the verandah of Bernie's Last Chance wait to take stock of the foreigners before returning to the sheep stations or to the stake-outs in opal fields. This is Outer Maroo. Population 87. Here two opposing cultures - the rough-diamond, boozing, bush folk and the teetotaller, church-going fundamentalists - used to co-exist peacably. Until the arrival of the cult messiah Oyster.