The Natural Way of Things

Set in contemporary Australia, the novel follows ten young women who wake from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned on a remote, abandoned sheep station surrounded by vast, empty paddocks. Each woman has been involved in a public sexual scandal with a powerful man, and each has been secretly abducted and transported to this compound, operated by a mysterious corporation called Hardings International.

The story is told primarily through the perspectives of two captives. Yolanda Kovacs is a nineteen-year-old working-class woman whose body has been the subject of public commentary since childhood. She was assaulted by a group of footballers, then pressured by corporate officials to sign away her silence. Unlike most of the others, Yolanda fought back during her abduction, kicking and screaming while her brother Darren and boyfriend Robbie waited outside and did nothing. Verla Learmont, a parliamentary intern, had an affair with a cabinet minister named Andrew. His chief of staff, Georgie Mullan, manipulated Verla into signing documents that facilitated her disappearance. Verla initially believes Andrew will rescue her, viewing herself as separate from and superior to the other captives.

On their first morning, the women are dressed in archaic workhouse costumes, their heads shaved, and fitted with leashes clipped to metal rings on their tunics. Two male guards control them. Boncer, a pock-faced young man with a leather baton, enforces obedience through beatings. When Barbs, a former competitive swimmer, speaks out of turn, Boncer breaks her jaw with his stick. Teddy, a younger backpacker with dreadlocks, is gentler but complicit. A third figure, Nancy, plays pretend nurse in a child's costume and has access to files on each captive.

Boncer marches the chained women up a ridge to a six-meter-high electrified fence encircling the entire property, demonstrating its lethality by shoving one girl's arm onto the wire. The fence, the absence of any road or communication technology, and the desolate terrain make escape impossible. The women eat powdered food from bowls stamped with the slogan "DIGNITY & RESPECT IN A SAFE & SECURE ENVIRONMENT" and are locked each night in individual corrugated-iron cells they call dogboxes.

The women gradually identify one another: Hetty, involved with a Catholic cardinal; Leandra, from the army; Joy, a singer exploited by her television producer; and others. What connects them is that each became the target of public shame for sexual encounters with powerful men. They are reduced to degrading tabloid labels: the minister's intern, the footballers' accuser, the cardinal's girl, the reality-show contestant.

During the first weeks, the captives are forced to build a road from heavy concrete guttering for the anticipated arrival of Hardings. They wear deep-brimmed bonnets that restrict their vision. Yolanda secretly inventories the dwindling food supply and tells Verla how her brother and boyfriend waited outside while she was taken. This triggers Verla's realization that nobody is looking for her either. Andrew is not coming. At night, Verla begins watching for a white horse she believes she glimpses near her cell, a private symbol of deliverance.

Months pass. The women's bodies harden with labor. In autumn, one morning the girls are kept locked in their cells with no explanation. Joy begins singing "Rolling in the Deep," and cell by cell the other women join in, drumming on walls and floors with boots and fists, the entire building throbbing with months of grief and rage. When they are finally released, Teddy reveals the truth: Hardings is not coming. They are all abandoned. The guards' authority collapses, and the women wander freely for the first time. But the electric fence still hums, and there is nowhere to go.

Yolanda discovers the food supplies are nearly exhausted and finds a box of medical supplies that Nancy never opened, meaning Hetty's burn wound festered needlessly for months. She also finds sanitary napkins, an ordinary item whose absence had been one of the most degrading hardships of captivity. When the compound's power goes out, the fence remains electrified on a separate source.

Verla falls seriously ill with fever. Yolanda stations herself at Verla's bedside, repairing rusted rabbit traps while keeping vigil. When Boncer tries to force Yolanda into a sexual act near the woolshed, she refuses. She sees him clearly as weak and afraid, tells him he is repulsive, and threatens to kill him. Boncer, shamed and crying, backs down. Yolanda retrieves the traps and carries them openly past him, swinging them wide. From this moment, Boncer is afraid of her.

Yolanda becomes the group's hunter, trapping rabbits and wearing their cured pelts as clothing, growing increasingly animal-like. Barbs boils the meat into stew on a slow-combustion stove that Leandra maintains. Verla begins secretly collecting wild mushrooms, testing them in a hidden meat locker, searching for a poisonous death cap to use on Boncer. Each captive develops a private sustaining ritual: Rhiannon, another captive, sits daily in the skeleton of an abandoned utility vehicle, pretending to drive; Maitlynd, a fellow captive, feeds moths to a pet frog; Joy and two fellow captives, Lydia and Izzy, groom each other obsessively.

When a hot-air balloon drifts over the property, Yolanda sprints after it in her rabbit skins, roaring for help. The passengers wave back cheerfully, calling "Beautiful morning!" as though she is part of the scenery. The balloon rises and vanishes, and Yolanda stands watching this other world spin away, unreachable.

When Boncer's sexual threat intensifies, the girls offer Hetty as a sacrifice. Hetty agrees, negotiating better food and boots, plus one unusual demand: a doll. Verla and Yolanda spend the night crafting it from a pillow, rabbit skins, and braided strands of the girls' shorn hair. Yolanda secretly pushes a dead baby rabbit into a hollow she carves in the doll's body. Hetty names it Ransom and carries it everywhere. Boncer becomes dependent on Hetty, but she raids the other girls' stored clothing, provoking a violent confrontation. Boncer suppresses it with Teddy's confiscated spear gun, regaining lethal authority.

Nancy dies of an overdose. The girls wash her body and burn it on a pyre, singing through the night. Hetty is visibly pregnant. Yolanda cradles a dying kangaroo caught in one of her traps. Then Hetty walks to the electric fence and electrocutes herself. As they return from burying Hetty, Verla finds the decomposing skeleton of her white horse near the fence line. Its death forces her to accept that no rescue is coming. She also accepts, with burning clarity, that Andrew never loved her.

Verla finally finds death cap mushrooms, keeping some in reserve, and serves one to herself at dinner, intending suicide. But Boncer snatches her plate and eats the mushroom himself. Over the following days, he sickens. Joy seizes the spear gun when the compound's electricity suddenly returns and kills Teddy. Boncer dies alone. The return of power means one thing: Hardings is finally coming.

A yellow Hardings International coach arrives, driven by a clean, fatherly man named Perry who calls them "poor girls" and presents them with luxury gift bags of skincare products. The girls tear into the packages, weeping. But when the bus turns west, into the setting sun rather than toward civilization, Verla understands that Perry's pity was not for what happened at the compound but for what lies ahead.

She unwraps her remaining death cap mushroom, prepared to end her life, but Yolanda's voice surges through her. Two words force their way up: "I refuse." Verla demands Perry stop the bus. The girls rise behind her, and Leandra grabs the steering wheel. Perry ejects Verla onto the road. Through the tinted window, she glimpses Yolanda, a small furred figure sprinting alongside the bus as it passes through the electrified fence's gate, slipping through the opening and vanishing into the scrub. Verla gathers the water bottles the other girls threw to her, turns away from the setting sun, and begins walking back down the gravel road alone.