Book Catalogue
A comprehensive collection of Robert Engwerda's literary works, from most recent to earliest novels.
Forthcoming: When the Wood was Green
Anna Land has her hands full in the here and now. She is a full-time carer for her dementia-affected husband, Ray. She's often in battle with her millennial daughter Kate who has enough problems of her own with an indifferent husband and two demanding daughters.
Feeling confined and trapped, Anna sets out impulsively on a road trip through Victoria as she recalls her and Ray's history together: their betrayals, her passionate secrets and the tragedy of their son, Terry.
As she drives ever on, emotionally battered at each stop on her journey, Anna decides on a drastic course of action that will either save or damn her.
When the Wood was Green is contemporary fiction told largely through Anna's voice, but also by Kate, Anna's brother-in-law Neville and by her cousin and childhood friend, Flick. It is a novel about ageing, memory and longing, loves won and lost, past joys and current regrets, and about being an older woman in a society where she feels increasingly invisible. With its dominant female voices and the questions it raises, this book has a perfect ear for contemporary voices and issues.
Contemporary Fiction
The Devil's Frontier
I thought then of New South Wales, of the human cargoes freighted there and how easily I could have been sailing away, not in the Bermondsey, but in some other vessel fitted with cages and shackles. I’d had a dream of Australia, but these weren’t the circumstances I’d hoped would take me there.
In 1830s squalid London, young Samuel Stack has great expectations when given work at the prestigious antiquities firm of Folk & Finch. But things there aren’t what they seem and when Sam is inadvertently caught up in a fraud scandal he and his family are forced to flee to Australia under assumed names. Arriving in New South Wales in the company of the enigmatic Martin Rammage, Sam finds his freedom again threatened when a betrayal exposes his identity and past. With little choice, he is once more on the run, this time to the Port Phillip district where he begins working for the irascible Captain Wesley James on his sheep station.
James’ station sits on the frontier of volatile relations between workers and boss, between convicts and free men, and especially between the new settlers and the land’s Aboriginal people. And as tensions there escalate Sam finds himself ensnared in a horrific act of frontier violence, an event that will change him forever.
Historical Fiction
The Summertime Dead
Crime Mystery
When a teenage girl and boy go missing from Mitchell most put it down to them running away. But when they are found brutally murdered the town’s attention quickly turns to its itinerant summertime population and to the dead girl’s boyfriend, Lee Furnell.
It’s 1966 and times are changing, even in country Victoria. Bob Dylan is on the radio, Elvis Presley on the television. But change doesn’t sit comfortably with everyone in Mitchell and the arrival and brash methods of the American-born Detective Gene Fielder raises temperatures inside and outside the local police station.
Mitchell’s Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole sees no obvious suspect at first. Not so Fielder whose attention quickly fastens on Furnell who is beaten up in trying to force a confession as tensions escalate between Fielder and Cole. Cole has few leads to go on and when tragedy strikes again he is even more determined to find the killer and prove Fielder wrong. And how does the spate of home burglaries and thefts in town and the earlier disappearance of another girl fit in with Cole’s investigations? And what dark secrets is Fielder hiding?
As he negotiates the delicate ground among the town’s hurt and aggrieved, Cole knows only he can untangle Mitchell’s murky secrets and run Furnell’s killer to ground. And that the threats to him lurk near and far from home.
Whistle Down the Wire
Crime Mystery
On a wet winter’s night in 1967, Harry and Dianne Colston are killed when their car collides with a freight train near the town of Mitchell. But from the outset Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole suspects it might be more than just a tragic accident.
Cole soon enlists the help of his new constable, Christine Sheridan, in revisiting the accident scene. There they see signs that only reinforce Cole’s suspicions about the crash. With few obvious clues to go on, however, Cole begins investigating the dead couple’s past and discovers that more than a few people had an axe to grind with the Colstons. Untangling the farmer’s messy dealings leads him to neighbouring landholders with their grievances, horse and cattle traders, the town’s illegal bookmaker and his sidekicks, as well as to the wealthy Kinross family. But buried deepest in the Colstons’ affairs is Harry’s hairdresser sister and his wife Dianne’s down at heel family. When Harry’s will surfaces and makes no mention of his child, everything left instead to Fantasio and Dianne's family, Cole is convinced something is wrong.
But answers don’t give themselves up easily. Was the motive for the Colston killings financial or personal? And was Harry or Dianne the real target? And who had the strongest motive of all for wanting them dead?
When the past reaches out to strangle the present, and Cole finally understands the truth about how and why the Colstons died, he uncovers the most shocking revelation of all.
Guy Fawkes Night
Crime Mystery
It is 1968 and times are changing, not always for the better. And especially not for the charred body found buried in the smoking ruins of the Sandpiper reception centre where the local football club has just held its end of year celebrations.
As police officers Lloyd Cole and Christine Sheridan probe the suspicious death they uncover disturbing evidence about the dead man’s dark practices. And with it the number of suspects pile up.
There’s the Sandpiper’s owners, Mark and Gary Weaver, Mark Weaver’s jealous girlfriend, corrupt shire councillors, Henderson the fruit shop owner, the backers of the Early Settlers housing estate, local farmer Tito Cavallo and marijuana-growing orchardists.
Then there’s the dead man’s own murky past in wartime Yugoslavia.
The investigation comes to a head on Guy Fawkes Night as more fires erupt, including one that engulfs a suspect linked to the Sandpiper fire.
But as Cole and Sheridan untangle the mystery even they aren’t prepared for the shocks that are finally revealed.
In Darker Waters
Crime Mystery
There are few leads to follow when Syd Fisher is brutally murdered the day Neil Armstrong first sets foot on the moon. But Senior Sergeant Lloyd Cole, still grieving the loss of his wife Nancy, returns from leave determined to find his killer. Together with his second-in-command, Christine Sheridan, they burrow into the town’s secrets and identify the leading suspects: Syd’s eccentric ex-wife Birdy Harrington, his brother Gavin, Syd’s self-professed best friend Richard Wetherby and members of the town’s fishing club.
Questions swarm about the suspects and their possible link to the murder but a breakthrough arrives when Cole discovers an unexpected connection between the fishing club and a past tragedy.
But queries remain — What was the reason for Syd Fisher’s earlier strange disappearance to New South Wales? Why was his involvement in the fishing club so acrimonious? And who was his girlfriend before his death, and what if she didn’t even exist? Then there are the frictions within the Fisher family itself, Wetherby’s obsession with Syd and the unknown father of Syd’s youngest sister’s baby. What do they reveal about Fisher’s life and death?
Answers stay elusive as Cole and Sheridan untangle these mysteries piece-by-piece, until a killer is found hiding
in plain sight.
After September 11
Literary Fiction
After September 11 is a moving novel about loss and recovery and finding a way forward even when the world appears to be crumbling around you.
Against the backdrop of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Jack struggles to accept that his wife, Stephanie, has been diagnosed with cancer. Faced with the prospect of losing her and caring for their eleven-year-old daughter Alice on his own, he stumbles.
As Stephanie bravely fights her illness she tries to map out a future for her husband and daughter. But surgery and treatments prove fruitless. When her brother and sister-in-law arrive to provide support, Jack is suspicious of their motives. A tug of war ensues for Alice’s affections with Jack determined not to lose her, even as his daughter’s rebellion erupts. In the midst of this upheaval, he receives another devastating blow when clearing away his wife’s possessions.
Despite his troubles, Jack inches his way forward until he and Alice forge a closer bond. Together they learn to rebuild their lives, accepting the past while looking expectantly to the future.
This contemporary novel explores the emotional minefields within families and the ways lives can be repaired after trauma.
Praise from Irina Dunn, Director, Australian Writers’ Network:
After September 11 is a quiet gem, a beautifully written novel portraying the deeply felt sensitivities of a man who is negotiating relationships with the women in his life – his dying wife, his daughter and, finally, a new lover. Ultimately, as if he has worked through the AA’s 12 steps of reparation and recovery, he emerges from grief to form a strong emotional bond with his daughter and to begin a new relationship without guilt or self-recrimination.
Harvest
Historical Fiction
Remote Australia, 1916. Stella Winterson wants nothing more than to be with Jasper Reynolds but she is thwarted at every turn by her father’s tyrannical rule. When her father banishes her to an isolated guest house without Jasper knowing, the young man recklessly enlists to fight in the Great War, Stella devastated when she learns of it.
As punishment for what her father sees as her continuing rebellion, on her return home he sends her to care for elderly Annie Underwood. But the relationship between the two women blossoms and helps Stella find the courage to pursue her own ambitions and contact with Jasper.
But war’s truths are brutal and the 1917 conscription referendum divides the nation as never before. In the muddy wastelands of the Western Front Jasper is reported missing prompting his disgraced priest father to enlist and search for him in an act that will have tragic consequences for all.
At her family property, Redlands, Stella’s father’s opposition to the war worsens his standing in the district and results in a savage attack that leaves him barely alive. With the summer harvest looming, the running of the property falls to Stella.
Refusing to be bowed by the tragic events around her, Stella takes charge of Redlands and her own fate.
Harvest is an uplifting story of love and courage, and of finding the will to never give up on who you are and what
you believe in.
Mosquito Creek
Historical Fiction
Huge floodwaters have engulfed a remote Victorian goldfield, reducing the prospect of digging up a fortune from very slim to impossible, and adding disease to the many possibilities of sudden death in harsh conditions. As sickness starts to take its toll and calls mount for the rescue of diggers stranded by the raging torrent, Sergeant Niall Kennedy must try to keep order in a place where frictions can become murderous. Does a suspiciously abandoned tent suggest there has already been a killing? And why has Mosquito Creek's erratic Commissioner Stanfield drafted in special troopers behind Kennedy's back?
In a new country where everyone's past has a question mark, asking too many questions is dangerous. But how else can you get to the truth?
Mosquito Creek is a rare treat - historical fiction that brilliantly evokes the hardships of early Australia, and a crime novel in a setting where crime touches upon everyone and everything. A priceless relic from the Old Country deepens the mystery and adds a mythic quality to the events unfolding in this isolated settlement. An Australian Deadwood.
Enthralling – Good Reading
Engwerda's novel offers a gripping and multifaceted exploration of the influences of the past ... In many ways, a book about masculinity – Australian Book Review
A gripping drama of how a group of colonials interact when they are either trying to escape, conceal or move beyond their past. Mosquito Creek is a place of secrets and lies, like the rest of Australia in its formative years – Daily Telegraph
Tense and entertaining, sometimes relentlessly so ... A rollicking tale of deceit, water and a great deal more – Adelaide Advertiser
Backwaters
Sometimes the greatest influence is what isn't there, rather than what is. Tom Lakeman has been haunted all his life by the disappearance of his father and the loss of a childhood friend. As an adult, he is destined to discover that the ripples of childhood wash far into adulthood and envelop him in ways he’d never imagined possible.
Backwaters is about love, loss, betrayal and redemption. This very Australian novel follows Tom Lakeman at three crucial times and places in his life, as the secrets of his past make their way to the surface gradually.
In the first, Tom is at primary school. His troubled father abandons the family, and Tom himself commits a minor act of thieving that indirectly leads to the accidental death of another boy, Stephen, the child of Italian migrants and the target of a bullying nun, and with whom Tom has a tentative friendship. If Tom had owned up to the theft, Stephen would still be alive.
In the second, Tom is now a schoolteacher with a wife and young family. He has been troubled all his life by the fact of his father’s disappearance, and the events surrounding that disappearance. He is drawn to Christine, a lonely teaching colleague. They take a party of boys to a local swimming hole, leave their charges for a time to make love, and learn later that a boy has drowned.
In the third, Tom and his wife and children drive to a beach house for the summer. This is a period of reassessment for Tom – he puts some ghosts to rest, with the help of his strong and loving wife.
Written with skill and burning insight — Rosalie Ham, author of The Dressmaker
Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, 2005
Literary Fiction