A gripping, sweeping and unforgettable debut from a writer whose talent cannot be contained.
GEMINI FALLS
by Sean Wilson
Affirm Press Australia, October 2022
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)
Australia, 1930, at the peak of the Great Depression: Detective Jude Turner is assigned to investigate a murder in his home town of Gemini. With fear and polio swirling through the city and his wife long passed, Jude decides to take his children, Morris and Lottie, with him to the small town he gladly left many years before.
Thoughtful and a little anxious, twelve-year-old Morris Turner sometimes feels more at home gazing at the stars than with his busy father and distant older sister. Arriving at the ancestral farm he meets relations that are strangers to him – an uncle, an aunt and a cousin, Flo, who has an unhealthy obsession with detective novels. The family is drawn into a community reeling from a murder and a financial crash. Without a clear suspect in the murder, the town’s suspicions turn to the downtrodden, huddled in camps outside the town.
But Morris is sure there is more to this case. With the help of new friends, he turns his attention instead to the people around him, confronting his fears and searching for a killer in a town full of mysteries – a search that will bring secrets old and new to the surface, and leave someone else fighting for their life.
Sean Wilson is an emerging writer and playwright from Melbourne. His short stories and plays have been recognized in many awards including a shortlisting for the 2016 Patrick White Playwrights Award (Sydney Theatre Company).
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