AustLit

David Apps is just 23 when he comes to Eraro. His mentor, the charismatic Hal Franklin, had undertaken the first government patrols in the area, and carries a deep arrow scar in his thigh. Eraro brings David the heady taste of power-and temptation. But as Papua New Guinea teeters on the brink of independence, Franklin-now a District Commissioner-is brutally murdered. Nineteen years later, David has the opportunity to return to the country and confront the killers. And perhaps achieve some kind of atonement for his own past. What he discovers is a side to Hal Franklin he never guessed at. Inspired by the true story of what is possibly the only political assassination in Australian history, this powerful novel explores the seduction and impossibility of colonial rule and the corruption, idealism and complexity of the men who served it. (Publisher's blurb, back cover).