Gunnawah by Ronni Salt

In Gunnawah, journalist Ronni Salt takes readers back to the 1970s to tell a rural crime story with plenty of real world connections. Set in the Riverina area, on the river border of New South Wales and Victoria, Gunnawah takes as its inspiration the influence of the Calabrian mafia on the area, and the attempts to cultivate and sell marijuana from the irrigation areas.

Gunnawah opens in early 1974 and focusses initially on 19 year old Adelaide ‘Adds’ Hoffman. Adds’ parents are farmers but she wants to get out of Gunnawah altogether, particularly due to something that happened a couple of years before. Adds is taken under the wing of Valdene, the owner of the local newspaper, and made a cadet journalist, which puts her in a great position when strange things start to happen in town. Those things are connected to the announcement of a new irrigation project for the area by a local politician with Italian community ties and Adds’ discovery of a strange crop growing illegally on an otherwise abandoned farm.

Adelaide is just one of a diverse range of characters in Gunnawah. As a result of having to introduce all of the players, it takes the story itself a while to get going. But meeting all of these characters is a treat and provides a deep dive into a rural community during a time of great change in Australia. And Salt clearly loves this community, warts and all, from the local pub run by a Russian mail order bride to the vanilla slices from the local bakery, to the blowhard mayor and his grasping family. The centrepiece of this being a visit from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his wife to the local showgrounds. But Salt is also alive to the crime and corruption going on in the area at the time.

While the revelations around the drug trade are central Gunnawah is anchored by a number of other mysteries – including the identity of the skeletal remains mentioned in the cold open and what really happened to Valdene’s husband Colin. And these link to other key events in contemporary Australian history.

Ronni Salt is the online identity of a journalist who lives in rural Australia and who writes on corruption, environmental and gender equality issues. In Gunnawah she is able to dig into many of these issues using the sandbox of historical fiction. Centring the tale on a resilient young woman but also exploring her whole community, those that enable her and those who are facing the tide of change. This is a great debut Australian crime novel, delivering a diverse cast of characters in a well realised time and place.