Miranda’s world is turning upside down: her best friend Sal gets punched by a new kid for no reason and he shuts her out of his life; her mother wants to become a contestant on a TV game show; and the apartment key they keep hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own. I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realises that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

Making The Rounds With Oscar David Dosa

Oscar is a tabby cat who resides on the third floor of the

Steere House Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Adopted by the nursing home as a kitten, Oscar has lived his entire life on the advanced dementia unit. In time, staff at the nursing home began to rely on Oscar as an “early warning system” announcing to those present that it was time to notify family and increase hospice services for those close to death. In July 2007, David Dosa garnered international attention for an essay on Oscar that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. David decided to write a book about his experiences with Oscar.This touching and engaging book is a must-read for more than just cat lovers.

The Long Song Andrea Levy

The follow-up to Andrea Levy’s award-winning Small Island is a set in early 19th Century Jamaica and is a tale of the end of slavery. The novel takes the form of a memoir of an old Jamaican woman, July, who was herself once a slave, she is now living comfortably with her son, a printer, who intends to publish her story. Set against turbulent times of oppression and rebellion, July’s story is a personal chronicle of the lives and struggles of individuals, which is at times both heartbreaking and uplifting. Despite the seriousness of her subject, the narrator’s voice remains charged with humour and insight and she is able to delight and move us with her story telling.

ROSETTA BOOKS

12/43 Maple Street Maleny ~ Ph: 5435 2134

ON A RECENT television news bulletin a distraught resident of Port au Prince in Haiti faced the camera to declare that, “I have lost my wife and my children. I only have God now”.

The horrific earthquake in Haiti and the 2004 tsunami that devastated coastlines to our north, are only two natural events that many still see as ‘acts of God’.

History reflects these tragedies many times where whole societies are bewildered and disorientated by rampant death and destruction. Inevitably it seems, people turn to their gods for the who and why of such events.

It was not until 1906, when San Francisco was wrecked and set ablaze by a giant earthquake that a different explanation was given, and God was taken out of the equation. The governor of California set up a commission of enquiry of scientists to work out what had taken place. The final report was a classic of modern geology, and it defined a 1300km-long fracture in the earth’s crust that they named the San Andreas Fault. God was not in the report.

Mind you, scientific explanations for natural catastrophes have not stopped faith-based thinking on such events. Despite the science, Pentecostalists in 1906 believed their earthquake was evidence of ‘God’s vehement disapproval’.

Retired Anglican priest and academic Ray Barraclough has tackled this complex issue in a book called Why -how to explain life’s tragic experiences.

Ray Barraclough’s book essentially traces the who and what of earthly calamity including diseases such as epilepsy.

The religious and supernatural causes stretch from the multitude of deities to the stars. He acknowledges that Christians have always approached God with the difficult questions. For example, if God is omnipotent and all loving why doesn’t he stop catastrophes occurring, and why does he let people go through such prolonged suffering?

Rarely in the book though does this former priest reveal a conflict between his own belief in an omniscient God and scientific explanations for disasters. But he does display a very open mind on the matter. For example, on illness he says, ‘There are too many people whose suffering has been relieved, or even removed, by modern medical procedures for me to be so dismissive of people’s belief in modern medicine’s capacity to affect what is within its claims to affect’.

Ray Barraclough inclines towards the social justice core of liberation theology which is where he comes close to his Catholic colleague and rebel priest, Peter Kennedy. Like Kennedy, he is wary of Church dogma and fundamentalism: “There is a need for alternative Christian voices to speak softly of God in the midst of resurgent strident expressions of faith.”

It is in his final chapter that Ray Barraclough focuses on the Why of his book. When nature becomes destructive of life and ‘the brook becomes a destroying flood’ it is Ray’s view that ‘in the face of these dimensions of nature, hymns of praise sound heartless.’

When tragedy strikes, Ray asks, what use are words, religious or otherwise?

Grief is intensely personal and Ray acknowledges that ‘God-talk’ is manifestly inappropriate and a hangover from past theology.

Ray Barraclough’s book Why is a fascinating insight into the role of calamity in our lives. We humans want certainty despite the scary randomness of horrific events. Many will not go as far as Richard Dawkins to claim that God is a delusion, but Ray recognises that within the underbelly of theology: “…pious explanations will tend to make the floor more slippery”.

Ray feels on more solid ground with the message of liberation theology where he sees social justice as the very core of the Christian gospel in action. It may not be the total answer to why but, “No explanation can repair the fractured faith so damaged by the realities of experience”.

Ray Barraclough is now a Hinterland resident who will join rebel Catholic priest, Peter Kennedy in a community conversation on Wed March 17, 6.00pm in the Maleny Community Centre. Bookings at Rosetta Books. These two thought-provoking clerics will explore the relevance of God in a contemporary world that must cope with the Haiti earthquake, AIDS, global warming and other natural and man-made calamities.

This was a crisis that had been brewing for several years and was as much about Peter’s shedding of Church formalities as it was about his personal struggles with the relevance of a heavily doctrinal church.

Kennedy was accused of not wearing vestments at Mass, of allowing lay women to preach and of using alternative Eucharistic prayers. More concerning for the dogmatists is Kennedy’s worrying out loud that Jesus was a human being rather than a divine one.

Peter Kennedy has been strongly supported by his articulate congregation at St Mary’s Church in South Brisbane. Following Kennedy’s sacking they became St Mary’s-in-Exile and re-located to the Trades and Labour Council building also in South Brisbane.

Journalist Martin Flanagan has assembled a number of commentators who reflect on Kennedy’s personality, the people who worked with him, his social justice work with the disadvantaged in Brisbane, and the complexity of his doctrinal fight with Catholic hierarchy that went all the way to Rome.

Broadcaster Paul Collins is clear on what side of the line he stands -”the temple police seem to be the kind of people who psychologically can’t tolerate the fact that others may have different approaches to faith to them…”

The specific combatants were Kennedy and Archbishop Bathersby who was once Kennedy’s friend, and Collins now sees the clash of two pretty big egos. He puts the blame for the sacking on Bathersby who he sees as having ‘a very narrow view of the nature of ecclesiastical communion’.

Age journalist Martin Flanagan’s sensitive portrait is of Kennedy the lonely but determined and charismatic man.

That charisma was felt by Millie De Conceicao a Timorese migrant who was the community garden coordinator at

beliefs.

History professor Ross Fitzgerald goes further to suggest that, ‘Fr Kennedy is the victim of an institutionalised Church more concerned with papering over the cracks than in cleaning up its own act as a force for good in the world.’

Catholic nun, Veronica Brady takes up that theme and is worried that the Catholic Church is bureaucratic and follows the model of the old Roman Empire. “The Law seems more powerful than the Spirit and prophets are regarded with suspicion”, she says.

A differing point of view comes from theology professor Neil Ormerod who says that when Kennedy brings into question the divinity of Christ, he can’t then call his beliefs Catholic or Christian. He frowns on the schism caused by Kennedy and says that ‘notoriety is almost guaranteed to produce St Mary’s. A strong Catholic, Millie is deeply saddened by what has happened at St Mary’s. ‘It’s taken a lot of people’s home away’, she says conscious of the homeless people who came to rely on the community garden and the church grounds. ‘The church without Peter … is nothing’ she adds.

Like Millie there are a number of short contributions in the book by St Mary’s supporters and a wide range of thoughtful people who were drawn to this vibrant church community.

Some are concerned at being ‘out of communion with Rome’, still others are angry at conservative church vigilantes who secretly reported on Kennedy’s wayward interpretation of church doctrine. Kennedy is said to have ordered one vigilante out of St Mary’s for taking photos at an unorthodox Christening.

Michael Morewood, a former Catholic priest believes what has happened to Kennedy is symptomatic of the wider view of Christians who don’t see relevance in orthodox theology or Catholic sacramental practice. He says these people are not being unfaithful, they just want their religion to shift to more contemporary views of men,

women and their relationship to each other and their

popularity’. In the end it comes down to whether Kennedy’s parish can claim to have upheld central Christian and Catholic beliefs.

Australian songwriter Shane Howard has sung at St Mary’s. He attempts to analyse the dilemma that caused Kennedy’s sacking and like many essayists in this book, sees an inflexible Church unable to embrace a modern world.

He concludes with what the Church has perhaps forgotten, that they and Father Peter Kennedy are on the same side: “Fr Peter Kennedy and St Mary’s ‘crime’ was to lean toward a modestly different kind of Australian Catholicism. It’s not a foreign country. ‘All are welcomed, none are turned away’.

THE LOVELY BONES ALICE SEBOLD When fourteen year old Susie Salmon is brutally attacked and murdered by her neighbour, she enters her version of heaven which happens to look very similar to her school playground, complete with other kids to talk to and guidance counsellors to help newcomers. However Susie is lost as she sees the after effects of her death, and can only watch as her family is slowly torn apart by grief, secrets and lies. Alice Sebold’s debut novel follows the life, death and afterlife of a girl and the journey of self-discovery she is forced to take, tenderly drawing on the issues of grief, loss and redemption. You will not be able to put this book down, and even when you do it will stay with you forever. Read the book before you see the movie.

THE SWAN THIEVES ELIZABETH KOSTOVA The Swan Thieves is a story about obsession: the obsessions we have with other people and with art, and how the two sometimes go hand in hand. It is also a book about love in many forms - first love, unexpected love and the love of a lifetime. Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life,

full of devotion to his work and his hobby painting. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Following on from her successful novel, The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova has created another masterful story.

THE TOMORROW BOOK JACKIE FRENCH & SUE DEGENARRO (Illustrator) The Tomorrow Book is an attractive and timely picture book about a young prince determined to find practical solutions to a number of environmental issues facing his kingdom. With hope and optimism he shows the nation’s children how simple and positive changes can be achieved. Some examples show readers how to collect and reuse water at home, grow vegetables and use fuel and transport alternatives.

All the illustrations are cleverly created from recycled materials such as the packaging from tea bags, flour packets, match-boxes and old letters, and the book is produced from recycled paper.

A lively and humorous story for young readers with an environmental conscience.

T

This is a book for locals and visitors alike and is designed for gift-giving. It will sit comfortably on coffee tables from Melbourne to Perth and reveals to many people for the first time the stories of the earth, the dreams and the magic that are the Blackall Range region.

Created by members of the Maleny-based Hinterland Business Centre (below) and compiled by Elaine Green, Earth Dreams Magic focuses on the creative and innovative individuals who work and live here as well as featuring some of the entrepreneurial businesses that have been putting the Blackall Range on the map. A number of professional writers, designers, photographers and natural historians have donated their skills to the book.

This photo-essay style book takes the reader on a physical journey from the Glasshouse Mountains up to the Maleny Plateau - across the small towns of the Blackall Range and along the Mary River Valley, from Kenilworth to the Crystal Waters Eco-Village - drawing in stories along the way and looking at this elusive thing called lifestyle.

Almost two hundred artists, craftspeople, photographers, writers, musicians, enterprising and interesting people are profiled, but the depths of this great well of creativity are far from exhausted. Earth, Dreams Magic is a celebration of the past and the present, the passion and the people - their connection to the earth, their dreams and the special magic they create – all brought together for the first time in this book.

The best photographers of the Blackall Range region have contributed to this art-style publication – Penny Riddoch, Andrew Goodall, Colin Beard and some talented amateurs – highlighting the incredible natural beauty of the area.

Steve deMasson’s graphic design skills give wonderful colour and life to the pages. Local writers Gary Crew, Jill Morris, Steven Lang, Michael Berry and James Cowan have each contributed specially written essays. Many other people have shared their stories, making this a

unique record. The Hinterland

Business Centre (HBC) has shown great faith in their community by undertaking this two year venture and acknowledges the support from major sponsors: Fountainhead Organic Retreat and Cooking School, Maleny & District Community Credit Union, Gary Myers Gallery, Poet’s Café and Coolabine Eco Sanctuary, Sahitya Graphics, Sunshine Coast Enterprises and the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, and the local businesses who supported the project.

Earth, Dreams Magic .. is being launched in late March and will be for sale from the Hinterland Business Centre at 38A Coral Street as well as widely available across the region.

Contact HBC on 5499 9911.

HINTERLAND AUTHOR, Steven Lang this month launches his published book, “a strong brown god - the mary river diary”. To research and write this book, Steven chose to walk the length of the Mary River from its source in Maleny to the coast at Maryborough. Along the way he was both confronted and delighted with what he found, and the characters he met. Here we publish an extract from Steven’s book which will be launched by research ecologist and environmental consultant, Barry Traill on Wednesday February 10 at 6pm in the Maleny Community Centre. The Centre bar will be open and all proceeds will go towards the renovation of the hall.

WHERE Little Yabba Creek comes in I swim in the clear water that flows out of the forest. Over by the other bank a school of mullet drift and turn in tight formation.

For a short distance on the western side the river has been fenced off from cattle. The farmer is above, up on the steep side of the hill, spraying thistles and castor oil plants. After we have passed the time of day for a while I ask him about the fencing.

‘It’s nothing but common sense,’ he says. ‘I have arguments with the bloke across the way because come the dry he lets his animals over my side. I says to him, “That fence is there for my cows, not yourn. Build your own.”

He don’t listen.’ The opposite bank is bare of almost any kind of vegetation. There is supposed to be a Bora Ring over there, but I can see no sign of it. The farmer has never heard of such a thing. ‘It’s all been ploughed up over there for years.’ he says. He directs me to the top of the hill to see my way to Kenilworth.

This is it then, Hinka Booman; the Larger Bunya Country! The Mary comes out of the neck in the hills behind me and meanders across extensive flats, with the Obi Obi coming in from the East and Kenilworth Bluff, Brooloo, proud in the North, the town spread out in the centre.

While buying supplies in the main street I am addressed by Les Moreland, a thin wiry man with a sharp jawline and an abrupt manner. He is unshaven, and the grey stubble on his chin gives him a derelict air. He notes my pack.

‘Where are you going then?’ he says.‘Maryborough.’ ‘You’ve got a way to go then, haven’t you? Oh, I know, you’re the chap who’s walking the Mary.’ ‘That’s right,’ I say, and introduce myself. ‘I know your name,’ he says in that curt way he has, ‘You’re one of my wife’s fathers.’

This remark is too difficult for me. I can make no sense of it. I stand confounded in the milk bar, wondering if I have stumbled on some obscure kinship ritual. He does not explain, just continues with the business of buying Champion Ruby Unrubbed. Then the name Moreland sinks in – this is the husband of my daughter’s schoolteacher.

‘Bring that with you,’ he says, indicating my sandwich. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

Les has a wealth of information on local history. Straight away he clears up a mystery from Simpson’s diary: he had constantly referred to a road in the valley. ‘It was an Aboriginal road, of course. The Blacks had been living here for thousands of years, they had their own routes along the River. They were as good as roads.’ ‘This is the trouble with history,’ he says, ‘I mean with drawing conclusions from what people wrote at the time. People can’t see outside of their own times. The white people who lived here in the 1800s, even those ones sympathetic to the aboriginal cause, couldn’t help but see them as savages. We’re the same, we have our own misunderstandings that we don’t even know about. You’d be a fool to think people in a hundred years will still think the same as us about the world.’ ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but sometimes you feel you can’t blame them; what about the way the Aboriginals treated women? You get these consistent reports of brutality.’ He nods. He rubs the tobacco on the palm ofhis hand and rolls it into a thin cigarette. ‘The Aboriginals treated their women badly,’ he says. ‘But no worse than the Whites. You know where we get the expression “Rule of Thumb?” Until the early 1900s it was British Crown Law you could beat your wife with a stick no thicker than your thumb. And that was just the beginning of it. So, some Aboriginals hit their women with nulla nullas. Where’s the difference?’

Interestingly, Inga Clendinnen, in her book Dancing With Strangers, both confirms and expands on this opinion. But then one of Australia’s major historians is not here, in Kenilworth, to support Les. He was born here, his family have places named after them. He remains, full of a crusty and cynical bitterness. ‘It’s true,’ he says. ‘I don’t like people very much. They don’t see things, they don’t value what’s important. You could take them out into the forest and all they’d see was a bunch of trees. It’ll be a generation before anyone values the river again. It’s not like it was when I was a child. There were swimming holes then, and I mean swimming holes. We spent our summers jumping out of trees into deep clear water. Now it’s a shallow drain.’

North of Kenilworth the water quality is poor enough to make me suspicious of swimming, even though from high on the banks I can see turtles paddling and mullet surfacing. On the Western side someone has taken a bulldozer to a hill. Giant electricity cables haunt the sky, their pylons marching across the valley, locating me exactly on the map. The smell of dead animals hangs in the air.

I push on through thistles and dead grass, grumbling at the ways in which the land is being misused, and what needs to be done to make it right. As the day lengthens I clamber over a series of horse fences populating a spur of land caught in one of the river’s meanders (what they locally call a ‘pocket’) and with each obstacle my mood becomes ever more sour. It is only after another half and hour of this sort of struggle that it comes to me that my outrage does not serve me. What I mean is that, even though this part of the River appears patently, wilfully damaged, getting angry about it here, now, isn’t actually helping.

The valley is a complex interrelation- ship of billions of parts, from the smallest micro-organism to the men in their bulldozers, from the turtles to the pylons. How it works is way beyond my comprehension. As a walker passing through, it is best to attempt a witholding of judgement. My place, today, is to observe the way things are, to take all of it into my imagination, not just the bits that please me.

This is easier to talk about than to do.

Steven Lang

M

Catholic doctrine. Peter Hudson’s pastel portrait of Kennedy so impressed the One Day Hill publishers that they reproduced it on their book of essays. It also impressed ABC Television who are producing a documentary about Kennedy and will be filming Hudson in his Maleny studio as he paints an oil painting of Kennedy for the 2010 Archibald Prize.

Steven Lang’s book will be launched in February, hopefully by Environment Minister, Peter Garratt. See next month’s issue of HT for a review of Steven’s book and details of how to purchase a copy.

Steven Lang’s play, A Strong Brown God, was performed at the Metro Arts Theatre in Brisbane in 1996. Currently writiing his third novel, Steven also writes short stories and articles published in anthologies, newspapers and literary magazines.

MARGE was dozing when she heard the sound. It was Sunday and she should have been at church. Instead a vicious bout of ‘flu had confined her to bed.

She heard it again: an alien sound.

‘Who’s there?’ she called out, her usually robust voice reduced to a croak.

Silence.

‘Is anybody there?’

Nothing.

She waited a while then struggled out of bed, threw on her thick red dressing gown and floral slippers and crept downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs hung her heavy winter coat and behind this, her father’s walking stick. She clamped her large hand round the stout, wooden handle, lifted it off the peg and peered round the corner to scan the room.

All was as it should be; everything was in its place. Everything that is, except the ormolu clock.

In the corner of the grey moquette sofa sat Wellington. He would have seen who had taken the ormolu clock, but of course, Wellington would say nothing.

A tour of the house revealed that the faulty catch on the kitchen window, which she had been meaning to repair, had given access to the intruder. If she hadn’t been ill and attending church as usual, things could have been a whole lot worse.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ That’s what Dennis used to say. It seemed natural and appropriate to think of Dennis just then.

As it was the ormolu clock that had been stolen, Marge decided she would say nothing about it to her friends. ‘Haven’t you reported it to the police?’ they would ask. ‘Haven’t you filled out an Insurance claim?’ She would do none of these things. She would be philosophical about it and count the years she had enjoyed it as a bonus.

But in the days that followed she missed it desperately. She missed the sound of it, the certain rhythm it lent to her days. ‘We’ll have to put something else on the mantelpiece,’ she said to Wellington who appeared to nod sympathetically. Wellington was the only one who knew about Dennis and the ormolu clock. It was their little secret, along with all the other secrets she had shared with him down the years. She had friends but it was always Wellington in whom she truly confided. He was a good listener, would never interrupt and would never betray her.

A few weeks later Marge had recovered sufficiently to go on the Senior Citizens excursion to the neighbouring seaside town. When they arrived the wind was sharp enough to slice you in two, the clouds hung heavy and grey like unwashed sheets, and the tide was out.

Instead of the traditional walk along the seafront, she decided to do some exploring on her own. Behind the main promenade she discovered an interesting street full of antiquarian bookshops where a good part of her morning was spent. On the way to join the main group for a fish and chip lunch at the café on the front, she came across a narrow, cobbled side street. Crouching between terraced houses was a small second-hand shop. She glanced in the window as she passed. And there, in amongst a jumble of pottery ladies with parasols and white china dogs was the ormolu clock.

In a dream Marge entered the shop. A bell rang and a bespectacled tall, thin woman emerged from the gloom.

‘The clock,’ Marge managed to say, ‘in the window.’

The woman came around a scrubbed pine table filled with assorted bric-a-brac and for the briefest of moments Marge’s attention was caught by the display of tiny teddy bears …

The tall, thin woman squeezed in front of Marge and reaching into the window, picked up the clock and held it out before her in long tapering fingers. ‘It is rather sweet, isn’t it?’ she said, showing a row of small white teeth. ‘Only came in the other day.’

‘How much?’ Marge asked, holding her breath.

A reasonable price was mentioned; money changed hands. Wrapped in tissue paper, the ormolu clock nestled in her capacious handbag. She made no mention of her discovery, of course, on the bus back home. Once inside the house Marge sank down onto the sofa, eased off her shoes and retrieved her purchase. She remembered the first time it had been presented to her.

Dennis.

There was a freshness about him, a cockiness, a bravado that had endeared him to her.

‘Got something for you,’ he’d said, thrusting the clumsily wrapped package into her hands on the last night of his Embarkation leave during the war. She’d unwrapped it and gasped in wonder.

‘Where did you – ’ but he’d put a finger to her lips.

‘Ask no questions, love,’ he’d said, winking. ‘Take it as a keepsake.’

She’d known that it couldn’t have been bought on a soldier’s pay. But to see his look of pleasure – she couldn’t take that away from him. She’d have married Dennis. But like thousands of others he hadn’t come back.

She got to her feet and with due reverence befitting the occasion she carefully restored the ormolu clock to its rightful place on the mantelpiece. Then she turned to Wellington. ‘Got something for you, too. A mate for company while I’m out.’ And she placed at the side of the giant teddy bear, a tiny replica.

This short story is by Joyce Lee, a long-time Maleny resident with a passion for writing. Her short stories have been broadcast by the BBC and published in magazines and an anthology. She is currently working on her first historical novel. Joyce is a member of Word Weavers - a writers group who meet once a month at the Maleny Library. The y write to common themes, read out loud to each other and discuss their poetry fiction or plays.

Andrew told the Hinterland Times that he used Teutoberg - Witta’s original name - for much of the action in his humorous account of the fate of the Paradise Parrot, an extinct species.

Set in the early 1970s when petty bureaucracy was rife in Queensland, the story follows legal disputes over ownership of the rare bird and a series of upheavals that lead the main characters to go bush and live like wild kangaroos.

Andrew has been a textbook writer for many years but this is his debut novel.

Last Birds is available in all major book stores on line and locally at Rosetta Books. Last Birds has been described as “a rollicking good read, full of unexpected twists”.