It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world.

In the NSW town of Flint, Quinn Walker returns to the home he fled ten years earlier when he was accused of an unspeakable crime. Aware that his father and uncle would surely hang him, Quinn hides in the hills surrounding Flint. There, he meets the orphan Sadie Fox — a mysterious young girl who seems to know more about the crime than she should.

A searing gothic novel of love, longing and justice, Bereft is about the suffering endured by those who go to war and those who are forever left behind.

 

Author

Chris Womersley

Chris Womersley was born in Melbourne in 1968, where he lived for many years. He trained as a radio journalist, but spent his twenties far less profitably - travelling aimlessly around the world, and washing an awful lot of dishes, earning the highly coveted International Kitchenhand of the Year award three years in a row. His travels included stints in India, South-East Asia, South America, North America, and West Africa. He currently works at Fairfax online in Sydney as a sub-editor. Chris has been writing for most of his life, starting his career with a 'Star Wars' sequel - fortunately unpublished and long since lost - in the late 1970s. He studied creative writing at Melbourne's RMIT. His short story 'The Shed' was published in Granta New Writing 14 and reprinted in Best Australian Stories 2006. The Low Road is his first novel and was shortlisted for the 2006 Victorian Premier's Award.

Country of Origin

Books:

Series:

ISBN
9781921844027
Year of Publication

Add new comment

This is a book review site, with no relationship whatsoever with any of the authors mentioned here.

We do not provide a method for you to contact authors for any reason and comments of this nature are automatically deleted.

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.