AustLit

'Compelling, compassionate and profoundly moving, this new novel by the acclaimed author of The Everlasting Sunday confirms Robert Lukins as one of our finest writers.

'Two women stand in the shallows, a man dead at their feet, while around them buildings burn.

'Amid the ruins of a fire-ravaged amusement park and destroyed waterfront dwellings, one boarded-up building still stands. May has come from Australia to Loveland, Nebraska, to claim the house on the poisoned lake as part of her grandmother's will. Escaping the control of her husband, will she find refuge or danger?

'As she starts repairing the old house, May is drawn to discover more about her silent, emotionally distant grandmother and unravel the secrets that Casey had moved halfway around the world to keep hidden. How she and Casey's lives interconnect, and the price they both must pay for their courage, is gradually revealed as this mesmerising and lyrical novel unfolds.

'Compelling, compassionate and profoundly moving, this new novel by the acclaimed author of The Everlasting Sunday confirms Robert Lukins as one of our finest writers.' (Publication summary) 

'I’ve heard of that place, Australia. There are even some memories that persist of it as a discrete, identifiable object. It was a thing taught to me in primary school in jovial, unambiguous ways. It was a series of tales of sheep, and rushes of gold, and the bushranging bloke with a metal bucket on his head. It played cricket against the West Indies. It was precisely 200 years old and we dressed as convicts and walked down the town’s main street to celebrate this fact. All incompleteness and lies that I felt disconnected from then, as I do now.'  (Introduction)

'During the freezing English winter of 1962, seventeen-year-old Radford is sent to Goodwin Manor, a home for boys who have been 'found by trouble'. Drawn immediately to the charismatic West, Radford soon discovers that each one of them has something to hide.

'Life at the Manor offers a refuge of sorts, but unexpected new arrivals threaten the fragile dynamics. Will the boys' friendship be enough when trouble finds them again?

'At once both beautiful and brutal, The Everlasting Sunday is a haunting debut novel about growing up, growing wild and what it takes to survive.  (Publication summary)