Ghost Child
By (Author) Caroline Overington
Transworld Publishers (Division of Random House Australia)
Bantam
1st October 2010
Australia
General
Fiction
A823.40
384
Width 125mm, Height 197mm, Spine 25mm
350g
In 1982 Victorian police were called to a home on a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne. There, they found a five-year-old boy lying on the carpet. There were no obvious signs of trauma, but the child, Jacob, died the next day. The story made the headlines and hundreds attended the funeral. Few people were surprised when the boy's mother and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime. Police declared themselves satisfied with the result, saying there was no doubt that justice had been done. And yet, for years rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy's six-year-old sister, Lauren...Twenty years on, Lauren has created a new life for herself, but details of Jacob's death begin to resurface and the story again makes the newspapers. As Lauren struggles with the ghosts of her childhood, it seems only a matter of time before the past catches up with her.
Caroline Overington is the author of two non-fiction books, Only in New York and Kickback, which is about the UN oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.