3 June 2015

Review #236: Iron Junction by Charlotte Nash



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“To take that second chance, we need to notice where we are and be open to the possibility of growing.”

---- Holly Elissa Bruno



Charlotte Nash, an English-Australian writer, has penned an incredibly touching and heart-warming love story called, Iron Junction which is actually the name of a town in the Pilbara region in the north-western part of Australia, where a young doctor from Brisbane takes up a job as a locum doctor in the hopes of finding herself one more time and to move on from a bad break-up, little did she knew that she could see a ray of hope in the middle of nowhere.




Synopsis:

Desperate to get away from her family's expectations of success in love and in work, Dr Beth Harding leaves Sydney behind and takes a locum job at Iron Junction – a mining town in the distant Pilbara. With the mine growing at a rapid pace, the town full of contractors and tensions running high, Beth is convinced she’s made a huge mistake until she meets Will, a man who shares her dreams and could make the difference between going home and staying on.

For Will Walker, being born into cattle farming was never the life he wanted. He’s traded a broad-brim for a hard hat and headed down the mines. Iron Junction seems like just another gig in the long road that’s taking him even further from home. But in the lonely fly-in, fly-out life, he never counted on meeting Beth ...

But when Beth and Will discover that the choices they make will have far-reaching consequences neither could ever have imagined, they have a decision to make. Will they be brave enough to risk loving each other despite everything that stands in their way?


Beth has just broken up with her fiance, Richard, and thus she is suffering from heart-ache, and to move on from Richard, Beth takes up a position as a locum doctor in a small town called Iron Junction which is coined because of a mine plant. In this middle of nowhere, Beth finds her zeal for medicine and also a second chance at love when she meets a new mine engineer, Will. Beth's passion for photography helps her make a new friend, Caitlin who is suffering from bronchitis due to lack of treatment in her childhood. But it was really difficult for both Will and Beth to traverse the path from being-friends to being-more-than-friends, since they both carry a lot of baggage and amidst of the red earth, heat, hurricane, they learn to find themselves before finding each other.

Firstly, I'd like to thank the author for capturing the red landscape and the extreme climate of Pilbara so vividly through her eloquent words. Not only the landscape the author have even managed to bring out all the tiniest details of this town with intricate layering, thus letting us see the town through our very own eyes. From the streets to the bar to the lifestyle to the mine plant to the smell of earth lurking in the air, everything have been strikingly portrayed through this novel. The negative and the positive aspects of this are also very strongly featured in this book.

The writing is very fine and her evocative narrative style only made me glued to the very core of the story. The plot is multi-layered and it is not only a love story, in fact it is so much about this small town, Pilbara, moreover, so much about every other characters present in this book. There is family drama, medical drama, political drama, environmental drama, heartache and heartbreak layered tightly and wonderfully into the plot, thus making it an engrossing read for it's readers.

The characters are all kept close to reality, especially Beth and Will, who goes through a lot in their life, thus affecting their conscience and confidence level. Moreover, the rest of the supporting cast suffers a lot because of the town and had their own personal issues and agenda which too the author have very skillfully brought out through this story. Moreover, the problems and the issues addressed in the book are very real and are relatable. Overall, this is a captivating and moving tale of love, finding oneself, kindness, medical practice in a small town, redemption and loss.


Verdict: The location and setting of this book makes it a worthwhile contemporary romance fiction and I believe, if you want to taste a bit of red earth and love, then do read this book.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Charlotte Nash and her publicist from Hachette Australia, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book. 
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Author Info:
Charlotte Nash knows first-hand what she is writing about, having worked alongside doctors as a medical student in rural Queensland. She was born in England and grew up riding horses in the Redland Shire of Brisbane. After completing degrees in mechanical engineering and medicine, she fell into eclectic jobs, amongst which she counts the best as building rockets, traversing the Pilbara mines and scrambling over shiploaders in Newcastle. These days, she is an editor, writer and researcher. RYDERS RIDGE is her first novel; her future novels will also be set in rural and outback Australia. Charlotte took part in the QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program in 2010.
Visit her here 


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2 comments:

  1. This sounds like a great read! I read a book called Outback Flames also set in Australia and I like the sound of this one as well, being set there too. It's a nice setting for a book and it's great that the author could capture it so well!

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  2. Yeah, she is really talented, thanks for stopping by :-)

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