Pobby and Dingan - Ben Rice

I stumbled across this fantastic novella from a first-time author whilst browsing the web, and I reckon Ben Rice could be a big name in the future.

The plot sounds trite; in an outback opal mining town, a girl loses her imaginary friends, and the whole community eventually comes out to help find them. The story is heart-warming but told in such a way as to undercut sentimentality. The language is typically earthy Australian, and the hardships of the mining life are ever-present.