The Last Eaglehawk

(Paperback)

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A thrilling action adventure set in wartime Australia, The Last Eaglehawk is the winner of the National Seniors Literary Prize for 2014. On a cold Brisbane morning in 1997, seven-year-old Benjamin Taylor is happy to stay indoors and fly jet fighters in the virtual world. For his grandfather, however, the computer game triggers a childhood memory he s kept hidden all these years ...An aircraft cockpit ...A Japanese plane in the crosshairs ...A terrible explosion ...It s 1942, and aviation designer Richard Gannon is coming to terms with the rejection of his prototype fighter plane, The Eaglehawk, when news comes through that Darwin has been bombed by the Japanese. The Australian Government can no longer afford to drag their feet and Air Commodore Wilfred Benham has a risky, and decidedly controversial, proposal to make. Richard s plane will be put into production but at only half the size. And it will be children, recruited from streets and orphanages across Australia, who will become its fighter pilots. The Last Eaglehawk is an exciting story of triumph and tragedy, of audacious wartime operations and the courageous children who take

Author Bio

Bruce Gannaway is the winner of The National Seniors Literary Prize 2014. His debut novel, The Last Eaglehawk, was inspired by his own experiences as a child building aeroplanes out of wooden packing crates, and later in life watching his own children wrestling with joysticks as they fought countless hostile fighters in the virtual world of computer games. Bruce was born in Melbourne in 1958 and his passion for writing began with stories which would later be read to his own children at bedtime. Married with four children and three grandchildren, Bruce lives in Mount Warren Park, Queensland. When he s not writing, building model aircraft, researching military history and collecting, Bruce works in the Australian Public Service. Inspired by authors such as WE Johns for his Biggles series of books, Jules Verne for his remarkable imagination and later Steven King, James Herbert and James Patterson to name a few, Bruce continues to indulge his passion for fictional writing.