The Different World of Fin Starling

Wagners Creek, otherwise known as the arse-end of the Earth, is the home of the mutton-bird, the carrion crow, and the remarkable Fin Starling. Son of the local provider of "special services", Fin is different from other children and soon it becomes clear that he is something of a miracle-worker as he transforms the dirt-poor shantytown into a place of pilgrimage.

Elizabeth Stead's gently comic portrait of Wagners Creek is handled with benevolent grace. Yet beneath the comedy runs an unsettling undercurrent and the suspicion that Fin's birthplace exists in a parallel universe where different laws operate.