This is a fictionalised account of the life of John King, the only survivor of the last leg of the Burke and Wills expedition. According to Attwood, King was 14 when he left Ireland to become a soldier. He fought in India, and was then recruited to look after the camels purchased for the expedition, thus travelling to Australia. He spent his early 20s on the expedition, and then lived the last 10 years of his life with his sister and cousin in St Kilda. While this book will appeal to people who like to read history in a fictionalised form, I found it frustrating that there was no indication of what was true and what was invented. This novel seems flimsy in comparison with The Dig Tree, Sarah Murgatroyd's brilliant non-fiction account of the same expedition. Imagining the life of John King could be an interesting and valuable project, but this is an overly long account that doesn't offer much that is new. The attempts at recreating the mid-19th-century vernacular are unconvincing, and parts of the narrative are slow and repetitive. The most absorbing parts of the book are those devoted to King s sister and cousin--perhaps Attwood took more liberties with the truth when creating these minor characters, and thus made them more interesting.

Mary Ellen Jordan is a freelance writer and bookseller.

C. 2003 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors

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