The Following

‘A politician was a man apart, with power lent to him while it lasted, a sack of bones in a suit coat thereafter.'

Years ago, in a midnight encounter beside the railroad tracks, a young boy meets a stranger with a powerful secret, a gift of uncanny understanding and a talent for knots. From this encounter, Marcus Friendly's ideas of himself take shape as he rises to become Australia's sixteenth Prime Minister. The night he dies, a shadow, ‘thin as a scythe', is there to collect him when he falls. Another young boy, Ross Devlin, witnesses the event.

Ross eventually finds himself on an outback station working for Kyle Morrison, son of Australia's most famous poet, ‘The Bounder'. Kyle suddenly needs help to undo a knot of his own, and a young union organiser, Max Petersen, steps in to right an old injustice.

Now, after years in parliament, Max Petersen, the inheritor of the Marcus Friendly tradition in more ways than one, awaits a call from the PM for the ministry he craves. Around him, a crisis among friends and family is unfolding, and everyone is forced to confront the legacy they have inherited, their influence in a changing world and what follows on after them.

About the Author

Roger McDonald began his working life as a teacher, ABC producer, and book editor, wrote poetry for several years, but in his thirties turned to fiction. His first novel was 1915, a novel of Gallipoli, winner of the Age Book of the Year, and made into a highly successful eight-part ABC-TV mini-series. McDonald lives on a farm outside Braidwood, with intervals spent in New Zealand. His account of travelling the outback with a team of New Zealand shearers, Shearers' Motel, won the National Book Council Banjo Award for non-fiction. His bestselling novel Mr Darwin's Shooter, was awarded the New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian Premiers' Literary Awards. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and South Australian Festival Prize for Fiction. A long story that became part of When Colts Ran was awarded the O. Henry Prize (USA) in 2008.

BOOKTOPIA INTERVIEW: ROGER MCDONALD ANSWERS BOOKTOPIA'S TEN TERRIFYING QUESTIONS - CLICK HERE