On a sweltering Friday afternoon in Durton, best friends
Ronnie and Esther leave school together. Esther never
makes it home. Ronnie's going to find her, she has a plan.
Lewis will help. Their friend can't be gone, Ronnie won't
believe it. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels can believe
it, she has seen what people are capable of. She knows
more than anyone how, in a moment of weakness, a
person can be driven to do something they never thought
possible. Lewis can believe it too. But he can't reveal what
he saw that afternoon at the creek without exposing his
own secret. Five days later, Esther's buried body is
discovered.

Hayley Scrivenor is a former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. Originally from a small country town, Hayley now lives and writes on Dharawal country and has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales. Dirt Town is her first novel. An earlier version of the book was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award.