The Suicide Season

The title The Suicide Season reflects the phrase applied to Australia's Northern Territory during its oppressively humid build-up to the annual monsoonal wet season. The Suicide Season is a contemporary adventure with a romantic thread and an exotic background. The novel is a combination of an Australian road story and tree-change. It takes place against the background of a worldwide stock market crash. Warren Yeats, a demoralized businessman, suffers a mid-life crisis. Yeats' wife has walked out on him, and he is disenchanted with what he considers to be red tape strangling his small business. Financial pressures force him to sell, and he decides to take an extended holiday. Yeats is an inner-city resident who thinks a bush walk is something you do on a concrete path through the botanical gardens-but he purchases a four-wheel drive and an all-terrain camper-van with the intention of driving to Broome and leaving his problems behind. Adventures befall him, including a potential romance with a single mother and a run-in with a gang of wildlife poachers.