"Remarkable. A story that will remain in the reader s memory."

Publishers Weekly

During the tumultuous summer of 1942. eleven-year-old Llndsay Armstrong

confronts an exotic alien trespassing on~his family s farm m Billarooby, a

small town in the Australian outback. While the war may be ~hr away, the alien

Lindsay encounters an escaped Japanese prisoner from a nearby POW

camp brings the traumatic repercussions of the war close to home.

As the oppressive summer drought threatens to devastate the Armstrongs

farm and dissolve the family ruled by Lindsay s grim disciplinarian father.

Lindsay~ imagination takes fl Lght. Witnessing the prisoner s brutal recapture

triggers nightmares of a veiled event from Lindsay s past. and he drifts

between these memories and fantasies about the prisoners not the hated

enemy but noble warriors who deserve fl eedom to return to their emperor.

The townspeople are obsessed by the POWs as well--but their fantasies of a

mass escape and their plans to thwart it are far blacker than Lindsay s

imaginings could ever be.

Billarooby is a gripping story of a boy s struggle to separate fact from

fiction; of a t amily undone by the rethsal to thee its darkest secrets: of a

drought-ridden outback village under the spell of its own imagining; and of

faith in human nature versus prejudice and paranoia.

~A suspenseful and vivid tale. It isn t often that coming-of-age stories

have something to say about adolescent growing pains. Jim Anderson s

first novel is an exception A rich and exciting novel."

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Jim Anderson can tie a story around my neck and lead me through his

world forever."

Bob Shacochis.

author of The Next New Worm

"Jim Anderson renders the scenery of the Australian outback with

cinematic force. Remarkable."

The New York Times Book Review

"The writing works brilliantly.., affecting and imaginative. "

Los Angeles Times