Bereft

Quinn Walker was sixteen when his father found him in a shed beside the body of his twelve-year-old sister, Sarah, with the bloody knife in his hand; he escaped before anyone could arrest him. Ten years on, in 1919, he has come through the war in France and returns to Flint, New South Wales, as Spanish flu grips the country, shutting schools, sealing state borders with armed guards and stirring talk of the apocalypse. Certain that his father and his uncle would see him hanged, he camps out of sight above the town. There he falls in with Sadie Fox, an orphan who wards off strangers with charms and chants and who appears to understand more about Sarah's death than any child could. Quinn slips home to see his mother, now sick with the flu, and begins to search for the real killer.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Crime, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, 1919

First published

2010

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9781921640605 (Scribe, Australia)

9781402798139 (SilverOak, United States)

9780857386540 (Quercus, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata