About the Author

Robert Drewe was born in Melbourne on January 9, 1943, but from the age of six, when his father moved the family west to a better job in Perth, he grew up and was educated on the West Australian coast. The Swan River and Indian Ocean coast, where he learned to swim and surf, made an immediate and lasting impression on him. At Hale School he was captain of the school swimming team and editor of the school magazine, the 'Cygnet'. Swimming and publishing have remained interests all his life On his 18th birthday, already wishing to be a writer but unsure 'who was in charge of Writing', he joined 'The West Australian' as a cadet reporter. Three years later he was recruited by 'The Age' in Melbourne, and was made chief of that newspaper's Sydney bureau a year later, at 22. Sydney became home for him and his growing family, mostly in a small sandstone terrace in Euroka Street, North Sydney, where Henry Lawson had once lived. Robert Drewe became, variously, a well-known columnist, features editor, literary editor and special writer on 'The Australian' and the 'Bulletin'. During this time he travelled widely throughout Asia and North America, won two Walkley Awards for journalism and was awarded a Leader Grant travel scholarship by the United States Government. While still in his twenties, he turned from journalism to writing fiction. Beginning with 'The Sava

Reviews

Although it may seem irreverent to call Robert Drewe's latest offering a thumping good read when it is so finely crafted, I do so unapologetically. The nub of the story is a father and daughter relationship (John Molloy and his daughter Grace) with most of the novel's point of view alternating between them-from the present day back to Molloy's life with partner Kate which ended abruptly when Grace was a toddler. To describe his enforced departure from the family's local island as an in-law problem does not begin to do it justice. Molloy's great claim to fame is a serendipitous discovery in the Great Sandy Desert early in his career as a anthropologist: the skeleton of a curiously slender female hominid, which he meticulously reconstructs from the ravages of the young woman's violent ritual cremation. The remains are eventually radiocarbon-dated back 100,000 years, and the find has unleashed a sparring match within the scientific community which continues on into the later narrative. The young Molloy names her after the gracile physique; later his name for the 'Salt End Woman' also becomes his daughter's. The adult Grace has found her niche as a witty, acerbic film reviewer in Sydney for a women's glossy, but we are introduced to her when she is in the tropical Kimberley on the run from a stalker-a reader of her column in 'Now' who turns out to be a compulsive erotomaniac who is sufficiently unhinged to avoid incarceration. Grace finds employment with a crocodile farm that is in the process of donning the mantle of ecotourism. Nature's hues and textures in the northwest are as multilayered as the novel and Drewe evokes them beautifully. Grace's involvement in sheltering a young escapee, part of a group of refugees who fled into the desert during a cyclone, forms a pivotal subplot. After the boat voyage and the camp, the young man is world-weary way before his time-'all the loitering men with busy eyes and undone flies', 'the three Nasser children cramming into a toilet cubicle to drink disinfectant' and 'Madly beaming Mr Aziz fountaining blood as he endeavoured to cut off his own head with his safety razor'. Serious social issues these: asylum seekers in detention, urban stalking and even the insouciance and na?vet? of many tourists in the bush; but Drewe leavens the mix with his deft observation of human foibles, such as the boy's intense preoccupation with perfecting his Leonardo di Caprio hairstyle. This author is a master of the vignette: the stalker impaled and losing his trousers on Grace's back fence in Sydney while Olga, the East European madam of the Golden Peach next door, bellows to her 'Sorry darling. Is a weirdo climbing in your yard?' The intergenerational plot folds into itself as it gathers momentum and the denouements of both strands are darkly comic. There is plenty of food for thought in the experiences and concerns of these characters and an abundance of rich imagery to savour. Anne Keehan is a librarian with the State Library of Western Australia C. 2005 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors