The summer sun shimmers in glimmering mirages on the drought baked plains of western New South Wales. The Stirlings' dams have long since dried up and now the bore pump has packed it in. Marg Stirling faces a long hot drive through the red dust to town to collect the replacement part. Life in this part of the world is a battle, whether it is droughts or fires, isolation or missed opportunities, prejudice or ignorance, or beneath that the biggest battle, the battle with the land itself. During her long drive past battles fill Marg's mind, as events conspire to make her wonder if there is not another way to live?

Drawing on the author's own childhood experience of life in western New South Wales, The Red Dust is an affectionate, knowledgeable and often funny portrait of life in these isolated farming communities.