Michael Burge

James Brandt didn't look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now he has returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge. The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James's journalistic curiosity and his anxiety—both of...

Journalist James Brandt lives in a brittle truce with his partner Dylan and his family, never talking about the homophobic attacks he exposed in his rural hometown, including the brutal death of a beloved cousin twenty years ago. This illusion of peace is ripped apart by the start of the state's historical gay-hate crime inquiry, and the reappearance of the...