The Fine Colour of Rust is out now in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland. The US edition will be released in September.

Single mother and dreamer Loretta Boskovic lives in Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby Australian bush. She has fantasies about dumping her two kids in the orphanage and riding off on a Harley with her dream lover. Her best pal is a crusty old junk man called Norm. She needs a lawnmower; he gives her two goats called Terror and Panic.

Loretta’s a self-dubbed ‘old scrag’, but she’s got a big heart and a strong sense of injustice. So, when the government threatens to close down Gunapan’s primary school, and there’s a whiff of corruption wafting through the corridors of the local council, Loretta stirs into action. She may be short of money, influence and a fully functioning car, but she has loyal friends. Together they can organise protests, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the abattoir – whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home.

The Fine Colour of Rust is a wryly funny, beautifully observed, life-affirming novel about friendship, love and fighting for things that matter. In Loretta Boskovic, Paddy O’Reilly (writing as P A O’Reilly) has created a truly endearing heroine who gives us all permission to dream.

Toni Jordan, author of Addition and Fall Girl, launched the book at Bella Union Bar Trades Hall on Thursday 15 March at 6pm. The campaign for a High School for Coburg was there raising funds with a sausage sizzle.