The launch of historian, Andrew Lemon's, debut historical novel. An historian finds a cache of letters home to England, spanning a dozen years. The letters are from Vernon Lee Walker, a young Englishman from industrial Wolverhampton, who meets his death on a beach on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific on the eve of Christmas 1887, to his mother. With decreasing frequency, the letters follow his trajectory, first in Melbourne and Sydney, then as he yields to the spell of the Pacific. But what happens between the lines? Does he fall in love with his brother’s wife? What does a boy not tell his mother?
The novelist steps in. This is a unique fusion of authentic history and informed invention – a tragic story of colonialism in Australia and the Pacific, told with compassion, humour and a deep understanding of time and place.