The tragedy and violence of that event provide the climax to this very personal, moving and surprisingly romantic story. With remarkable skill and in achingly beautiful prose, Roger McDonald takes the reader on an archetypal Australian journey which parallels the nation's progress from its country childhood, through the adolescent exuberance of its young cities, to initiation on one of the world's ancient battlefields. It is a vital journey, haunted by menace and disillusionment, one embedded in our national mythology. This astonishing first novel, published to great critical acclaim in 1979 and since then selling over 100,000 copies, tells the story of two boys from the bush, the thoughtful and awkward Walter and his knowing friend Billy Mackenzie, and their girls Frances and Diana. Together they discover a future which seems full of promise, drawing them into the exciting turmoil of passion and war. But theirs is a fateful alliance, in a world all too quickly, with an outcome they never could have foreseen.
Author Biography
ROGER MCDONALD is the author of six novels: 1915, SLIPSTREAM, ROUGH WALLABY, WATER MAN, THE SLAP, and MR DARWIN'S SHOOTER. His account of travels with New Zealand shearers in the Australian outback, SHEARER'S MOTEL won the 1993 National Book Council Banjo award for non-fiction. The internationally acclaimed besteller MR DARWIN'S SHOOTER was awarded the New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian Premiers' Literary Awards, and won the National Fiction Award at the 2000 Adelaide Writers' Week. THE BALLAD OF DESMOND KALE won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and South Australian Festival Prize for Fiction.
