A haunting, powerful novel about the power of the land and the passions of people trying to make it their own.One spring day in late 1992, when William was halfway between his eighth birthday and his ninth, he looked out from the back verandah of his home and saw, huge in the sky, the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. He stared at it, wondering. The thunderhead was dirty black, streaked with billows of grey. It rolled and boiled as it climbed into the clear blue day, casting a vast shadow upon the hills beyond. But there was no sound, no rumble of an explosion. William was aware of the smell of burning . . . but it was a good smell, a familiar smell. The smell of grass, of wheat, of the farm itself.His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle - an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders. But as the past and present of Kuran Station unravel and merge together, the price of that inheritance may prove to be the downfall of them all. The White Earth is a haunting, disturbing and cautionary tale.'The novel is beautifully structured, filled with parallels and reverberations which come back to haunt and illuminate the reader as the story unfolds.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser'A great Australian story embracing national themes that should engage us all.' - Lucy Clark, The Sunday Telegraph

ia/whiteearth00mcga.pdf

Andrew McGahan

New York, NY: Soho

Soho Crime

United States, United States of America

First Edition, 2006-01-01

New York, ©2004

no toc
margin cuts #s

[curator]adam.m@archive.org[/curator][date]20100618200403[/date][state]approved[/state]

When young William's ineffectual father is killed, he is cast upon the charity of an unknown great-uncle, John McIvor. Soon he is thrust into his uncle's plan to regain the family estate, and his mother's manipulative plot for him to become McIvor's heir. Neither notice William is ill--and his condition is becoming worse

After his father's accidental death, William goes to live on the Australian estate of his great-uncle John McIvor, who tries to enlist William in his obsession of preventing his land from being repossessed by the Aboriginal natives

2023-06-28