Nine-year-old Clement Killeaton's father makes a living placing bets on horse races for a professional gambler. His mother is a pious Catholic. His fellow students are cruel and aloof. But from these elements, all suffused with the mysterious but forbidden attractions of sex, Clement creates an imagined world of his own. Centred on fictional horses, the races they run, and their invented owners, jockeys, and fellow competitors, it is played out with Clement's prized marble collection in the dusty backyard of his home, across the landscapes of the district, and over the continent of Australia.

An unsparing evocation of a bygone way of life, Tamarisk Row's lyrical prose is charged with the yearning, boredom, fear, and fascinations of childhood.