About the Book
Outback Western Australia, 1958. For generations, the MacBrides have lived on a remote sheep station, Meredith Downs. A million arid acres, it’s an ocean of land, where the weather is a capricious god, and time still roams untamed.
One ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered.
Fate comes for them again, in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.
Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey, as he is forced to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.
Format: Audiobook (13h 40m) Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 5th March 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction
Find A Far-Flung Life on Goodreads
Purchase A Far-Flung Life from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]
My Review
At the heart of A Far-Flung Life is a series of random events and unintended consequences. A kangaroo crossing a road at night, a passenger in a car who wasn’t supposed to be there, a miraculous survival, a rainstorm forcing the need to find shelter.
It’s difficult to say more without revealing pivotal events in the book. What I can say is I found myself completely drawn into the story and the life-changing decisions some of the characters have to make, as well as the traumatic things they are forced to keep to themselves, not necessarily to protect themselves but others. Even more heartbreaking are the events that remain only as fragments of memory, the complete picture remaining tantalisingly out of reach until suddenly comprehension returns bringing anguish, guilt and shame should the truth be discovered. As it turns out, quite a few people become interested in unearthing the truth, each for different reasons.
The backdrop to all these events is the vast sheep station of Meredith Downs, farmed by the MacBride family for generations but, crucially, not owned by them, just leased from the government. This becomes significant later on in the book. It’s difficult to imagine the endurance needed to farm an area so huge travelling from one boundary of it to another can take days. A remoteness that means education must take place over the radio and medical attention relies on the Flying Doctor service. The landscape, although beautiful at times, can be a harsh environment in which to live.
‘Out here, it’s red earth for as far as the eye can see. Overhead, the sun ploughs an unending blue sky. Under dust-green mulga, a lizard seeks shade and shadow; ants engineer heat-defying nests; kangaroos suck moisture from tender leaves, ears swivelling to locate the distant rumble: on the straight vermilion line that cleaves the sparse trees…’
My favourite character was Pete Peachey, the roo shooter. I loved his gentle nature, his steadfastness, quiet wisdom and sense of justice. The author gradually reveals his fascinating but heartbreaking back story which I think could happily have made a novel in its own right.
I enjoyed every minute I spent with A Far-Flung Life. My only niggle was that the final, fairly short section of the book covered a long period of time in the characters’ lives so that one minute a character was a child and the next they had a family of their own.
In my review of the author’s previous bestselling book, The Light Between Oceans, I commented that the final chapter read like it was designed to provide a “Hollywood” ending. (It did in fact as it was made into a film in 2016.) A Far-Flung Life has a similarly emotional finale except this time the conclusion felt perfectly judged.
I listened to the audio book narrated by Lewis Fitz-Gerald.
In three words: Emotional, compelling, immersive.
Try something similar: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
About the Author
M L Stedman was born and raised in Western Australia and now lives in London. Her first novel, The Light Between Oceans, was a Sunday Times, New York Times and international bestseller and won the Goodreads Choice Best Historical Novel Award and the HWA Goldsboro Crown Debut. It was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin literary award and shortlisted as an Amazon Rising Star. In Australia, it won the Indie Best Debut and the Indie Best Book awards and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Literary Society Gold Medal. The Light Between Oceans has been published in around forty-five languages and has sold nearly five million copies worldwide. It was made into a Dreamworks film starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, produced by Heyday Films. A Far-flung Life is M L Stedman’s second novel, to be published worldwide.
What Cathy Read Next... 