This great novel could fittingly claim to stand as the Australian Book of Genesis. A young man at the turn of the 20th century, takes a wife and carves out a home in the wilderness near one of the growing cities of Australia. Stan Parker becomes a small farmer: he accepts life as he finds it. Amy bears his children and time brings him a procession of ordinary events - achievements, disappointments, sorrows, dramas, dreams. There is, too, the daily intercourse with neighbours of their kind. And at the end death walks into the garden.