Hung Out to Dry

In the small Australian bush town of Manton during the 1880s, thirteen year old Sinead Malone receives a marriage proposal from local publican Karl Unworth, a man with a past and three times her age. Sinead has no interest in men like Unworth, let alone marriage. In an ongoing battle to fend off the publican, she is beset by an unlikely coalition of powerful people with a vested interest in supporting him. She also finds that the age of consent laws and culture in this part of the world offer young women little protection. For seven years Sinead struggles against appalling odds and faces soul destroying treatment but she manages to cling on. Then events take a particularly disastrous turn and a frightening end comes into sight.