Preservation

Description

On a beach not far from the isolated settlement of Sydney in 1797, a fishing boat picks up three shipwreck survivors, distressed and terribly injured. They have walked hundreds of miles across a landscape whose features-and inhabitants-they have no way of comprehending. They have lost fourteen companions along the way. Their accounts of the ordeal are evasive. It is Lieutenant Joshua Grayling's task to investigate the story. He comes to realise that those fourteen deaths were contrived by one calculating mind and, as the full horror of the men's journey emerges, he begins to wonder whether the ruthless killer poses a danger to his own family.

Jock Serong's novels have received the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, the Colin Roderick Award and the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK). He lives with his family on Victoria's far west coast.

'A riveting and brutal tale.' * Good Reading * 'Serong's prose is evocative, his dialogue convincing.' * Sydney Morning Herald * 'Full of tension and menace.' 'Serong is a talented storyteller.' * Booklist * 'One of Australia's most innovative and ambitious crime writers.' * NZ Listener * 'Well-researched.' * Herald Sun * 'Although Serong's Preservation and Grenville's The Secret River differ in style, approach and period, they share both a gripping sense of narrative and an unflinching commitment to honestly portraying the bewildering complexity of early encounters between European settlers and indigenous Australians.' * NZ Listener * 'A great work of fiction to prompt a further dive into the history books.' * Weekly Times * 'Imaginatively based on the true story of the wreck of the Sydney Cove...it is twisty and gruesome and the identity thief Figge is a magnificently horrible individual' * Strong Words * 'A beautifully written, sometimes chilling, story inspired by the shipwreck of the Sydney Cove, and the disappearance of 14 of its 17 survivors.' -- Emma Viskic * Sydney Morning Herald *