Daniel Findlay’s speculative fiction young adult novel, Year of the Orphan (2017), is set in the harsh Australian Outback hundreds of years into the future.

A girl, called Orphan and who was sold as a child, is being pursued across the desert by a feared being called The Reckoner. She carries secrets about the collapse of civilisation given to her by Old Man, who remembers the past.

The Orphan is driven to understand the past as she sees that as the key to survival now.

Will the Orphan save the only home she knows—as corrupt and greedy as it is—or will she decide for its destruction?