Booklovers Festival

Roger Averill

Thomastown Library
Thursday 10 June
11.00am-12.00noon

In 2009 Roger Averill published a travel memoir, Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey. Earlier this year, Roger published a novel called Keeping Faith.

In Keeping Faith the innocence and certainties of childhood are delicately tested against the realities of adult life. Josh and Gracie grow up in a working class world centred on the values of faith and family. Both cherish their father, a lay preacher, and their mother, but for Josh the complex secrets, doubts and subtleties of the world do not allow for certainty. In adulthood he works as a labour ward attendant, his younger sister Gracie as a nurse on a remote mission station in Papua New Guinea. While Josh’s conviction falters, the unfailing faith of his sister leads to tragic consequences. As events move between 1975 and 1994, between a family drama in outer suburban Melbourne and a tribal rebellion in Melanesia, faith and doubt become entwined.

Booking required: phone Thomastown library on 9464 1864, or book online at www.yprl.vic.gov.au

Books by Roger Averill will be available for sale and signing, with thanks to ELTHAMbookshop.

Full Booklovers Festival Program


Tess Evans

Rosanna Library

Wednesday 9 June

7.00pm-8.00pm

Book of Lost Threads is Tess Evans' first novel. She previously worked in the TAFE system. In her time at TAFE, she taught and counselled a wide range of people: youth at risk, migrants, indigenous trainees, apprentices, sole parents and unemployed workers of all ages and professions. Her experience with these people is clearly visible in her humane, compassionate writing. She is currently undertaking a Diploma of Professional Writing at NMIT.

Tender, funny and memorable, Book of Lost Threads is a story about love and loss, parents and children, hope, faith and the value of simple kindness.

Moss has run away from Melbourne to Opportunity on the trail of a man she knows only by name. But her arrival sets in train events that disturb the long-held secrets of three of the town' s inhabitants: Finn, a brilliant mathematician, who has become a recluse; Lily Pargetter, eighty-three-year-old knitter of tea cosies; and Sandy, the town buffoon, who dreams of a Great Galah.

It is only as Moss, Finn, Lily and Sandy develop unlikely friendships that they find a way to lay their sorrows to rest and knit together the threads that will restore them to life.

Booking required: phone Rosanna library on 9459 6171, or book online at www.yprl.vic.gov.au

Books by Tess Evans will be available for sale and signing, with thanks to ELTHAMbookshop.