AustLit

'Penny Taylor, from London's East End, finds herself part of the struggling Hapless family, living in a caravan park in the Illawarra on the south coast of New South Wales. She is kept busy with three young children, two of whom belong to Dudley Hapless, her present partner and a professional basketball player with the Hawks. Dudley has four brothers, Dick, Rob, Bill and Bruce, and a younger sister named Rosie. Dick is a motor mechanic who seemingly cares only about cars and motor racing, Bill is working in Sydney as an architect and has mortgage problems, Rob is presently serving a prison sentence at Silverwater for his part in an armed robbery and Bruce, who works in a pet shop in Warrawong, is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. Young Rosie, an apprentice hairdresser, is a breath of fresh air in the family, pure and innocent. Her mum's recent death caused her much sadness and she is now working hard to try and keep her grown-up family together. When Penny discovers that one of her children has an aggressive form of leukaemia, Rosie finds herself unmarried and pregnant and Bruce adds a further complication by choosing a very unwise direction, the family teeters on the brink of disintegration. Years of frustration and disinterest are gradually cast aside as each family member finds a way to lend support to these personal crises that are bigger than all of them and, along the way, they discover their own strengths and talents. Told from multiple character perspectives, Winfale Park is a personal and emotional home-grown drama about a group of strangers linked only by a surname, who come to remember the meaning of family and why they should do whatever it takes to stay together.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.