Eighteen-year-old Aaron is charismatic, resourceful and addicted to heroin. His mum has kicked him out of home in a last-ditch move to help him get straight, and he wanders the streets of South Melbourne, living on his wits and sleeping rough - all the while chasing drugs, dreams and love.

Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship. This regular cash could be the lifeline Aaron needs to start again, but The Man keeps raising spectres from Aaron's past that he'd rather forget. As Aaron gathers the courage to confront the events that derailed his life, his rage grows - and the consequences could be fatal.

So Close to Home is a pacy, gritty and captivating novel exploring homelessness, power dynamics and the ties that bind. Social worker, debut author and winner of the prestigious VPLA for Unpublished Manuscript Mick Cummins has created a striking, emotionally complex and unnervingly tense narrative that poses one simple question: who can we ever truly rely on?

Mick Cummins was born in Tasmania where he wrote his first full-length play, Window Without a View. It was elected for a reading at the Australian National Playwrights Conference and produced at Hobart's Theatre Royal Backspace. In 1994 he moved to Melbourne with his partner and two children, where his second play, Perfect Madness, was developed with the Melbourne Writer's Theatre and produced at the Carlton Courthouse. In 2001 he won the NSW Premier's History Award for the documentary Thomson of Arnhem Land before co-writing the ABC docu-dramas, Monash: The Forgotten Anzac and Menzies and Churchill at War. He wrote and directed the ABC documentaries The Woodcutter's Son and Portrait of a Distant Land and has written two unproduced feature film scripts developed with Screen Tasmania, Film Victoria and Screen Australia. His latest screenplay, The Hut, is in pre-production. So Close to Home is his first novel.