Dirt Creek
One Friday afternoon in a small Australian town, twelve-year-old Esther left school, heading for home where her mother was waiting with a snack for her. But Esther didn’t arrive. How could a girl vanish in such a short distance, in such a close-knit community?
Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels, a Missing Persons investigator, is sent from Sydney to find Esther and learn what has happened.
But this is not purely a police procedural story. And Sarah is not the only one conducting an investigation: Esther’s best friend, Ronnie (Veronica) is convinced that her friend must be hiding, and is certain she can find Esther and bring her home.
The story, compressed over a few days, is told from several points of view in alternating chapters. We experience events through the eyes of adults (Sarah, and Esther’s mother Constance) and children (Ronnie, and Lewis — Esther and Ronnie’s friend).
The writing is wonderful, with details that bring the setting and individuals to life and plunge us right into the lives and environment in which this story unfolds. The novel is a compulsive read, immersing us in the fears, loyalties, secrets and misunderstandings that link the key members of this community. Much is going on beneath the surface, and Esther’s disappearance is only part of it.
One thing that becomes apparent is that the adults and children might as well be living in different worlds. The children have their own rivalries and fears, which impact events in ways that are under the adults’ radar. The adults have their own concerns and don’t imagine that their children might harbor important secrets.
The plot takes shape with several twists, leading us deeper into the lives of everyone involved. By the end we’ve learned everything., in a satisfying story that still lingers in my mind.
This book is Hayley Scrivenor’s debut novel. An earlier version was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize in 2020 and won The Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award that same year. Published by Macmillan Australia in May 2022 under the title Dirt Town, it quickly became a #1 Australian bestseller. The title was changed to Dirt Creek for publication in the UK and US later in summer 2022, and several translations are in the works for other countries.
Scrivenor was born in 1990 in New South Wales in southeastern Australia. She grew up in a small country town much like the one in Dirt Town, but moved to Wollongong, south of Sydney, when she began high school. As a volunteer with the Wollongong Writers Festival (and eventually as director of the Festival) she was first inspired to write fiction. During studies at the University of Wollongong, where she ultimately received a PhD in creative writing, she wrote (and published) several short stories. In 2016 she began the story that eventually become Dirt Creek.
Among her influences she lists two other wonderful Australian authors, Gary Disher and Jane Harper, as well as Irish writer Tana French. She lives in Wollongong, in an area traditionally the home of the aboriginal Dharawal people. She says, “As a white writer, descended from British arrivals, I try to remember whose country I’m writing in. Aboriginal people have lived here for thousands of years and continue to fight for and care for the land and waters.”
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