Cirrus@Austlit

'From one of Australia's most brilliant writers, a gripping true story about the tangled fates of two couples and the foster children trapped between them

'Michael and Mary Shelley are Christian fanatics who loathe their fellow Australians – especially their 'foul language, reckless indulgence of alcohol and obsession with idiotic ball sports'.

'Lenore and Tom Blaine are working-class Queensland publicans raising a large family in a raucous, loving, rugby-league-obsessed home.

'There's just one problem. The Blaines are foster parents to three of the Shelleys' children, who were removed from Michael and Mary as infants. And the Shelleys are prepared to do anything to get them back. Anything.

'Australian Gospel is a family saga like no other – heartbreaking, hilarious and altogether astonishing.' (Publication summary)

'Lech Blaine was just seventeen when he was in a crash that killed his best friends and changed his life.

'On an evening in 2009, seven teenage boys piled into a car to go to a party. They never arrived. The driver - who was not drunk or high - made a routine error and then overcorrected. The vehicle flew off the road. One passenger died on impact. Others were flung from the car. Lech walked away uninjured. In the aftermath, two more died in hospital and one was left disabled, in an incident that convulsed their rural community.

'Crippled by guilt, Lech turned to social media, cultivating a persona as the ultimate 'grateful survivor'. Over time, he spiralled into risk-taking and depression. His public bravado fell away as he tried to accept how an accident - one wretched error of youth and inexperience - had changed the trajectory of so many lives.

'How do we grieve in an age of social media? How does tragedy shape a community? And how does a boy on the cusp of manhood develop a sense of self when his world has exploded?

'This stunning memoir pulls no punches. It marks Lech Blaine as a writer to watch.' (Publication summary)