SHORTLISTED - WA PREMIER'S BOOK AWARDS 2026 Different people, similar situations The necessity of finding empathy
The chance of something better
It is the late 1970s in Williams, a wheatbelt town in Western Australia, just south of Narrogin. Maggie Cottonwood, pharmacy assistant, and Leo Braker, bookshop owner, form a hesitant friendship. On making piecemeal revelations-all they can bear to tell-it becomes clear their histories have similar shapes and patterns. Chance played a big role in both their lives, but so did necessity.
What went before-in the world, Australia, each of their families, to their previous spouses-shapes how they see themselves. Friends cheer and steer them when conflict divides.
With wheatbelt isolation and changing times affecting decisions; with river, hills, agricultural plains and tiny communities giving them outlets for emotion, Maggie and Leo draw closer, and their stories start to brighten and merge.
Chance and Necessity focuses on location and ordinary quotidian happenings of small-town Australians, which summon recognition in every reader's mind.
In the style of Elizabeth Strout's
Olive Kitteridge, and
Olive Again,
Chance and Necessity focuses on the ordinary quotidian happenings of small-town Australians.
