Invisible Boys author Holden Sheppard will join journalist and author Chenée Marrapodi for a special book launch event this July.
Sheppard is celebrating the release of his third novel – his first for an adult audience – following the success of his young adult tales The Brink and Invisible Boys, now a smash-hit Stan series.
King of Dirt is described as a gritty and heartfelt gay coming-of-age story set in the world of FIFO workers and tradies in Western Australia.
Giacomo Brolo, aka Jack, is a mess. He works piecemeal construction gigs in remote WA, drinks himself to oblivion and is estranged from his family and friends. He’s consumed by a self-loathing all too common for closeted men who have grown up in a world of hate and shame.
But then Jack returns to his regional hometown of Geraldton for a family wedding. He hasn’t been back since he fled at the age of eighteen, and his past soon catches up with him.
Turns out Jack’s deeply conservative Italian family would prefer he remained in the closet. Then he finds out he may have conceived a son with his teenage girlfriend, and now Jack needs to convince her and her new husband that he’s fit to be a father figure. And whatever happened to Xavier, the former schoolmate who Jack was in love with and whose rejection spurred him to leave Geraldton in the first place?
Is Jack doomed to live a dead-end life – or can he open himself up to the possibility of love, found family and connection?
Holden Sheppard will appear at Bayswater Community Centre on Thursday, 31 July from 5:30 – 7:30. For more, head to Eventbrite.
