Traven Collins, a hack St Kilda writer is chosen to run a Writers' Festival up near The Flinders Ranges. Unfortunately the road to Calangula, the site of this proposed extravaganza, runs past his old town of Story's Crossing, where he hasn't been for thirty years. But destiny doesn't care what Traven thinks, and a mad Kenworth truck forces Traven off the main road onto a side road to Story's Crossing. The Cross the locals call it. It's 2008, hot and dry from the Big Drought, and The Cross, like all Aussie towns under stress, seems quieter and smaller than the town he remembers. And in the main street Traven runs into his former Girl Friday, Carmen. He hasn't seen her for a dozen years, She's got a new daughter, eleven years old. Hmmm. Well he did have that one drunken night with Carmen...He runs into Astrid, the little girl who broke his heart way back when they were on the verge of the end of childhood. She's many years older, like Traven of course, still has the magic, and is in trouble with bad people cooking meth. And he begins to fixate on the death, all those years ago, of his childhood mate Tully, who so loved horses he was named after the mighty Tulloch. As he recalls the troubles and joys of childhood such as the love of his young life Astrid, Traven finds himself drawn into the mystery of his great friend Tully, who died by drowning in the town creek. The creek that hasn't had water for two years. Tully was a great swimmer, a junior athlete, how could he have drowned? Meanwhile his old girlfriend Astrid has come calling for his help because she's become involved in the 'speed' business. Ice. Crystal Meth. Astrid, who betrayed him so cruelly way back. He'd even left the town behind him and headed for the Big Smoke because Story's Crossing had been his personal cross to bear - in fact way back the kids used to joke that the stops on the railway line to Adelaide were The Stations of The Cross. So he's back and he is forced into the role of Small Town Hamlet - avenging the sins of the past, and trying to avoid the trouble that seems to be looking for him. But he can't avoid it and Death comes looking for its pay-off. And Traven is beginning to wonder what this Writers Festival is all about. After all, it's set in not in a one-horse town, but a zero-horse town. There will be blood. The book, The Country Jesus, is crime & mystery novel with a love of the bush and wayward tracks. And people die as Traven investigates the ancient crime against his friend, and a modern crime involving his childhood love.