It's 1968 and free-thinking country girl May Callaghan's world is turned upside down when she finds out she's pregnant to her boyfriend Sam, who is awaiting draft orders. A profoundly moving story of love during a time of great social change, with an ending that will leave you cheering.
Her devoutly religious mother and her gentle but damaged father are fighting, and May's boyfriend, Sam, has left their rural hometown for Melbourne without so much as a backward glance.
When May lies to her parents and takes the train to visit Sam at his shared house in Carlton, her world opens wide in glorious complexity. She is introduced to his housemates, Clancy, an indigenous university student, and Ruby, a wild bohemian. With their liberal thinking and opposition to the war in Vietnam, they are everything that May's strict Catholic upbringing should warn her against.
May knows too well the toll that war has taken on her father, and the peace movement in the city has a profound effect on her. For a while, May's future burns bright. But then it begins to unravel, and something happens to her that will change her life forever.
Author bio:
Emily Brewin is a Melbourne-based author and educator.
Hello, Goodbye is her first novel. Her second, Small Blessings, is due for release with Allen & Unwin in February 2019.
She has been awarded an Australian Society of Authors Emerging Writers' and Illustrators' Mentorship for her fiction writing, and has been shortlisted for Hachette Australia's Manuscript Development Program and Varuna's Publisher Introduction Program. She was recently awarded a 2018 Moreland writer's residency and a 2018 Bundanon Trust artist residency to develop her third novel, The Piano.
Emily's short stories have been short listed for a number of literary awards, including the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize, Alan Marshall Short Story Award, Overland's Fair Australia Prize and the Elyne Mitchell Writing Awards.
Her work has been published in Feminartsy, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Mamamia, Shine, Metro and Screen Education magazines.
