About the Book
When the Great War ends, Joshua Connor, a grieving farmer and sometime water diviner from the Mallee in Victoria, sets out to fulfil his wife's dying wish – to travel to Gallipoli to recover the bodies of his three sons and bury them in consecrated ground. Crescent collides with cross, and hope with reason as he discovers that his eldest son, Art, may still be alive. When Connor makes a desperate dash into the perilous heart of Anatolia one question haunts him: if Art is alive, why hasn't he come home?
This is not a war novel, not even an anti-war novel. Instead it focuses on the battles that go on inside the hearts and minds of a small group of Australians and Turks as they struggle to bury their dead and rebuild their lives after the First World War. The story is based on first-hand resources, diaries and official records.
About the Author :
Andrew’s working life began in archaeology. Armed with a Masters in History and Archaeology from the University of Melbourne and a trowel from the local hardware store, he worked extensively on excavations throughout the Middle East and Turkey. Having failed to locate the Ark of the Covenant, and on the brink of starvation because of the lousy pay, it was time for Andrew to find a proper job. Instead he began working as a freelance writer. He had a weekly interview-based column in The Age newspaper, Australia’s premium daily broadsheet, and was a regular contributor to Vogue Living.
After completing two books, he turned his attention to advertising, lured by the brevity. He completed Award School – an industry run ad course – and is guilty of developing product names, positioning statements, press campaigns, TV and radio ads and marketing material for clients as diverse as Australian Taxation Office, Tourism Victoria, Fosters Group, Honda, Ford, ANZ, Thirsty Camel, State Trustees, VicRoads, Cancer Council, Brookfield Multiplex and Tasmanian Salmon.
In Andrew’s latest career iteration he has a Diploma in TV and Video Production and works as a scriptwriter and researcher for film and television. More recently he has been Script Editor and Script-coordinator across the series of Jack Irish telemovies, starring Guy Pearce. Andrew is currently Co-producer on the third of these, Dead Point, and co-writing the fourth, White Dog. He is the Associate Producer on the recent adaptation of Peter Temple’s Broken Shore.
Andrew has recently co-written the feature film The Water Diviner with Andrew Knight and they are about to begin work on writing another feature that remains a mystery (even to them). Meaghan has written and researched several series for Australian television, including the Logie-nominated series, The Pacific in the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill, Shane Delia’s Spice Journey: Turkey and Gourmet Farmer Afloat and also works as a researcher on other major film and television productions including The Sydney Mardi Gras Parade, Adam Liaw’s Destination Flavour: China, The Water Diviner, Australia: The Story of Us and Doctor Doctor. She also writes regularly for The Guardian, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper on art and culture, and is the Australia/NZ correspondent for the UK-based publication, Research Professional News.
Meaghan’s first novel was an adaptation of the script for Russell Crowe’s feature, The Water Diviner, which was published by Pan Macmillan and sold over 45,000 copies in Australia and internationally. She is represented by Curtis Brown Australia, and in 2018, her novel The Honourable Thief, was published by Pan Macmillan, with the sequel, The Emerald Tablet, published in 2019. In 2018, Harper Collins also published Meaghan’s book, The Pacific: In the Footsteps of Captain Cook with Sam Neill.
Meaghan lives in inner-city Melbourne with her screenwriter husband, their two children, a dog, a geriatric chicken named ‘Black Ops’ and two cats. Jack Thompson, AM (born 31 August 1940) is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS). He is best known as a lead actor in several acclaimed Australian films including such classics as Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Man from Snowy River (1982) and Breaker Morant (1980). He won Cannes and AFI acting awards for the latter film. He was the recipient of a Living Legend Award at the 2005 Inside Film Awards.
