Author event: Rabbit Town by Kevin Radley - Forster

A family saga drenched in hardship and betrayal, that gives light to hope and forgiveness.

About the book..

It is 1932 and one in every three men is out of work. One is Charlie, who in desperation, moves his family to Happy Valley, a shanty town on Sydney’s eastern fringe. Using his wits to survive, Charlie calls upon the help of his son, Tom, to follow the footsteps of the original ‘rabbitohs’, traipsing the streets and flogging rabbits. Young Tom, just fifteen years old, is mesmerised by a Catholic, Irish girl, Hazel. Their blossoming love is torn apart by circumstances, and to make life even more difficult for them, Hazel’s mother is infuriated that Tom, the Rabbitoh boy, is a Protestant.

Throughout the story, the reader is dropped into the lives of the characters amidst a backdrop of significant moments in modern Australian history. The storyline delves into a tumultuous family situation, and a secret is buried. Through war and social upheaval, the damning consequences of the deception are manifested in the generations that follow.

Nearly a century after what happened in Happy Valley, the truth is finally exposed during the global pandemic. Family descendants have their own character put to the test – are they able to come to terms with the past and forgive those who came before them? The story takes the themes of change, continuity, and Australia’s military legacy, through a multi-generational narrative. The result is a saga that resonates with readers across the generations.

About the author..

Kevin Radley: While navigating his Kombi van around Australia in the early 1980’s, working and writing along the way, Kevin collided with a bull near the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

He spent the dry season working in one of the two pubs in town. It was there that he wrote about the characters he encountered in a collection of short stories. When he returned to Sydney, Kevin used samples of his stories in a successful application to join the team of story-liners for a new television series, ‘Neighbours’. He worked in this capacity until the program was cut by Channel Seven and picked up by Channel Ten.

Whilst maintaining an interest in writing, he threw himself wholeheartedly into a teaching career, nurturing a passion for delivering creative science lessons to his students. He taught in schools of the Nepean Valley for more than 30 years. During the final two years of teaching in the region, he wrote his first novel, ‘The Teacher’s Secrets’.

In 2019, he moved with his wife to the mid-north coast of New South Wales, where he taught on a casual basis for a year while writing his second novel, a work of contemporary fiction, ‘Thundersong’. Kevin retired from teaching in 2021 to focus on writing his third novel, a work of historical fiction, ‘Rabbit Town’, published by Contempo Publishing, 2024. He is currently writing his fourth novel, a work of contemporary fiction, ‘The Baobab Tree’.

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