'The Shepherd's Hut is an exquisite, brutal coming of age novel. It tells the story of Jaxie, a boy on the run from his past, and explores the way love and hate combine to form a young man's beliefs.

Ever since Jaxie's mum died of cancer, leaving him alone with his violent, drunk father, Jaxie has wished his dad dead. Then one day he returns home to find his father's body in the garage, crushed by his own car as he tried to mend it with dodgy equipment. Jaxie knows immediately he has to leave, to escape the town and the accusations of murder that will come his way, and to get to Magnet to see his cousin Lee, the only friend he has ever had and the girl he wants to spend the rest of his life with. 

So Jaxie sets out into the vast bush on foot to hide out until he is sure he isn't being followed, avoiding the highway, surviving on the animals he shoots. Eventually he comes across a solitary camp. Its sole resident, ex-priest Fintan MacGillis, has been there for eight years, visited only every six months by someone who brings him supplies. Fintan's life of isolation is both escape from a terrible crime and exile, his punishment that he will never have the opportunity to confess. Drawn together by an agreement that neither will speak about their past, Jaxie and Fintan form a bond, and Jaxie finds himself forced to grow from a child to a man in order to protect someone more vulnerable.

The Shepherd's Hut is an exquisite coming of age novel. As Jaxie tracks across the Australian landscape - a place that provides safe haven, harbours criminals, and threatens to kill those who haven't reckoned with its hot, waterless vastness - Winton draws a picture of a child becoming a man: fierce, loving, ruthless.