It really kind of took hold and almost wrote itself. I was really just along for the ride with this book, you know. It became so much more than I'd originally intended, and I'm so glad that it did. It's also a, you know, very tentative little love story as well - Charlie falls in love for the first time, very nervously and very badly. And instead, it became a book about coming of age but it also… addressed themes of, uh, the nature of friendship and the nature of towns' secrets and myths and traditions and how they're allowed to flourish. When Jasper doesn't reappear from the water, Charlie dives in, pulling his friend from the dark waters and back to safety.I set out to write an Australian gothic mystery novel, but it soon became so much more than that once the characters developed and the story unfurled for me. Jasper, racked with anger and despair, dives into the river. Holding a letter from her sister, Charlie and Jasper learn what happened to Laura: her death was a suicide due to her father, a respected town leader, molesting her for years. Jasper's father, with whom he has little contact, kept this secret from Jasper to punish Jack for accidentally killing his wife Rosie in a car crash years ago.Ĭharlie, determined now to tell Eliza what happened to her sister, takes her to the secret glade, but finds that Eliza already knows the truth. What they discover is astonishing: Mad Jack is not the killer and he reveals instead a little-known secret about Jasper's parentage - he is Jasper's grandfather. The night of the town's New Year Fair, Charlie and Jasper decide it is time to act and confront Mad Jack. But their newfound cheer is stripped away when racist locals vandalise Jeffrey's family home. In town, things are beginning to look up after Jeffrey, previously bullied and excluded, helps the local junior cricket team win against their archrivals. Jasper is pleased, however, when Charlie offers him the interesting evidence he's found. Jasper, meanwhile, escapes the clutches of local police and returns to Charlie's house at night, badly beaten. He goes onto Mad Jack Lionel's property and looks for answers. When the town Sargent finds and interrogates Jasper, Charlie is determined to find the truth and save his new friend. But Jasper reappears at his window one night, they stake out Mad Jack's house together, and Jasper urges Charlie to break in and find the evidence they need. Charlie feels alone with his secret and his task of helping find evidence to catch the killer. Meanwhile, at home, Charlie's tempestuous mother Ruth dishes out harsh discipline, to which his browbeaten father Wes appears resigned. ![]() As the townspeople of Corrigan, led by the Sergeant, search for Laura, they get closer to the glade every day.Ĭharlie struggles to contain what he knows and battles to keep a lid on his over-enthusiastic best friend, the Vietnamese and cricket-loving Jeffrey. Jasper disappears for days and Charlie carries the secret heavily, especially when in the company of Eliza Wishart, his unrequited love and the younger sister of the missing girl. ![]() Besides, Jasper tells Charlie, he already knows the murderer's identity: Mad Jack Lionel, the town recluse, a man who it is rumoured killed a woman several years previously and hung her in the local abattoir.Ĭharlie gives in to Jasper's wishes and together they hide Laura's body, agreeing to keep it a secret and catch the real killer themselves. Because of his Aboriginality he is blamed for everything bad that happens in Corrigan and he believes he will surely be blamed for Laura's death. Jasper takes him to a secret glade where Charlie witnesses something terrible: a 16-year-old girl, Laura Wishart, Jasper's girlfriend and the only person he could trust, is hanging dead from a eucalypt tree.Ĭharlie immediately wants to contact the police. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie takes off into the night with him, terrified but desperate to impress. Rebellious, mixed-race, and solitary, Jasper is for Charlie a distant figure of danger and intrigue. ![]() It's Jasper Jones, an outcast in the small Western Australian mining town of Corrigan. ![]() Late on a hot summer night in 1969, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish 14-year-old boy, is startled by an urgent knock on his bedroom window.
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