Follows the story of Colin Campbell as he works his way across Australia droving cattle, and in 1940, eventually gets caught up in the call for men to enlist for the war in Europe. This is the fourth novel in Donald Stuart's six-novel series, The Conjuror's Years.
Donald Robert Stuart spent most of his life in Western Australia. He left home at age 14 and began a career as a swagman, that is an itinerant who wandered the roads seeking casual work. He travelled through much of northern Western Australia finding work on cattle stations and it was during these years that he came into close contact with Aborigines.
Donald Stuart volunteered at the start of WWII for the 2nd AIF. He saw service in the Middle East as a 2/3rd Machine Gunner and then in Java, Indonesia, where he was captured by the Japanese. He then spent three and a half years as a POW and was sent to work on the infamous Burma Railway, a purgatory from which many did not return.
He published some fifteen books, including novels and memoirs, many of which are concerned with the lives of the Australian Aborigines with whom he came into close contact over many year.