NEW GUINEA MOON

A powerful coming of age story with engaging characters, an intriguing plot and a unique sense of place provided by the novel’s unusual setting in New Guinea around the time of its independence from Australia.

Julie has grown up without ever meeting her Dad – and with just the occasional Christmas card and the knowledge that he flies planes for a charter company in New Guinea. When she flees her increasingly tense relationship with her mother in Australia to stay with him one long summer, she learns to appreciate not only her long-lost father and his love of flying, but also New Guinea itself and the people she meets. An awkward romance with a young expatriate contrasts with her growing attraction to the son of a local coffee plantation owner. A tragedy and the unravelling of a mystery leave her reeling, but her experiences force her to evaluate what she really wants out of life. Kate Constable is one of Allen & Unwin’s most successful writers. Her most recent middle grade novel, Crow Country, won this year’s Children’s Book Council of the Year Award for Younger Readers and we have sold 15,000 copies since publication a year ago. Kate was born in Victoria but spent much of her childhood in New Guinea, without television but within reach of a library where she ‘inhaled’ stories. Kate has been published in the US (Arthur A Levine), Denmark (Carlsen), Germany (Sauerlander), Japan (Poplar) and Slovenia (Mish).