The Lost Man by Jane Harper **** (of 4)

The protagonist of The Lost Man is Nathan Bright, the oldest of three brothers. Nathan lives alone tending  cattle on a marginal farm in the Australian outback whose dimensions are so large that it takes hours and hours of driving dusty dirt roads to go end to end. The main character, however, is the outback itself. Hundreds of thousand of acres of near-desert flatness, summer daytime temperatures beyond human capacities, and unparalleled nighttime darkness. 

Somewhere midway between Nathan's farm and one managed by his middle brother, Cameron, is the mythical stockman's grave. The book opens when the youngest brother, Bub, and Nathan meet at the grave where Cameron has just died of heat and dehydration, something an experienced farmer like Cameron would not have fallen prey to accidentally.

Moving at the slow pace of a rising summer sun, but with the inescapable intensity of midday in the desert, the secret lives of the three brothers, their wives, and children emerge from where they have been covered by coatings of dust, grit, and the fear we all face at being honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.