FORTHCOMING BOOKS – UPDATE
HOT OFF THE PRESS I’m working with a fellow historian on a brand new book which is well advanced. As soon as we are in a position to do so, we will let you have some details, but we are very excited. We think it’s a winner. Something of a teaser here
Letters to a Lost Mother (or That’s Not My Child): A family at war
Due to other work (PhD included) and COVID-19 this book which I have been working on for years, has been further delayed. But the good news is that I have more material and there’s at least one more chapter now to write. Stand by, as they say.
Synopsis
I seek answers to simple questions that had mystified me for decades. What deep secrets was my mother keeping about my missing grandfather, a World War 1 veteran? Would the answer explain the disappearance of my mother and my baffling childhood in an orphanage many years later? Instead, I discover dark, disturbing events that even my mother didn’t know about.
On her side of the family, more than thirty children spanning five generations were warehoused in children’s institutions in Victoria. It began in 1865 when a vulnerable 11-year old boy was sentenced to five years on Victorian prison hulks. Thus was created a family marked by juvenile detention in gaols and reformatories, debilitating poverty, the birth of children in and out of marriage, the deaths of children in and out of custody, and a soldier-father who used his children to exact revenge for his wife’s unforgivable betrayal.
The family struggled against a welfare system determined to cast them as undeserving—and to keep them away from their children. In the form of letters to his mother, I recreate the full astonishing story. It ends with the unexpected intervention of Queen Elizabeth and a world champion sportsman who unwittingly provide a circuit breaker which sends me, at age 15, to the other side of the world, and the long way home to freedom—and back to my extraordinary family.
The book confronts the way the welfare system devalues rather than helps families in crisis. While this story is set in Australia, similar events are now gaining media attention in the UK and Ireland, USA, Canada, Scandinavia and elsewhere.
Keywords: 1. Child and family welfare. 2. Children’s institutions. 3. Neglected and criminal children. 4. Industrial School. 5. Reformatory. 6. Orphanage. 7. Ballarat-Victoria-Australia-History. 8. Adoption-Foster care. 9. World War. 10. Genealogy.
Photo: Billy Sinnett (my missing grandfather) who returns disillusioned with war only to be confronted by betrayal at home. The soldier-father cannot make peace at home and uses a string of children to exact revenge.
SOLD OUT. An Orphan’s Escape: Memories of a lost childhood. Lothian Books, Melbourne, 2005. More information, including reviews, here.
OTHER BOOKS
Rural Law Handbook, With Tony Smith and Jan Bowen. Victoria Law Foundation, Melbourne, 2002, A best-seller now adapted as an online service. With Sharon Guy, The Re-Discovery of the Ballarat Orphanage’s Arthur Kenny Avenue: Commemorative Booklet, Ballarat Child & Family Services, 2012. CAFS in Ballarat has issued an updated version taking into account that the Avenue was relocated to Fortune Street in 2015.
One thought on “Books”
Comments are closed.