'In 2004, celebrated Australian author Tim Winton released The Turning, a popular, award-winning, and critically acclaimed short story cycle1. Winton is renowned for his attention to issues of masculinity in his fiction (O’Reilly 2014) (Grogan 2014) — and non-fiction (Winton, The Masculine Mystique 1994) — and for being a Christian who writes about religious themes (Dixon 2005) (Grogan 2014, 203). Whether intentionally or not, I believe Winton brings religious themes and masculinity issues together in The Turning through a reframing of the Bible’s Prodigal Son parable from chapter fifteen of Luke’s Gospel.' (Introduction)