AustLit

'The day after I tried to kill my mother, I tossed some clothes, a pair of hiking boots, a baseball cap and a few toiletries into my backpack, and left at dawn.

'Patrick has always considered himself a good son. Willing to live his life to please his parents, his sense of duty paramount to his own desires and dreams. But as his mother’s health continues to deteriorate and his siblings remain absent, he finds the ties that bind him to his mother begin to chafe.

'After an argument leads to a violent act he travels to a familiar country escape to reflect on what his life could be – and through a chance encounter with a rare animal and an intriguing stranger starts to wonder if perhaps it is not too late to let his heart run wild.

'A story about family, love and the cost of freedom, My Heart is a Little Wild Thingserves as a reminder that we all deserve to pursue our dreams.'

Source : publication summary

'There is nothing more important than love and refuge.

Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian corporal at twenty-one, is face down in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate.

William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly. When the two are reunited, James is recovering from an accident, hidden away in the home of an unusual family - a family with secrets. Together they will risk it all to find answers.

Soon William and James are thrust headlong into territory more dangerous than either could have imagined.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The public discussion about Australia’s military past seems to be getting increasingly histrionic every year. In the hands of our politicians, who apparently have an innate understanding of the power of the military story to promote self-serving nationalism, our dominant war narrative is about a little country’s unbounded male courage and sacrifice. Indeed, we are almost always told about the men, the ‘Diggers’, who are held aloft as the archetype of the faultless Antipodean hero. Coerced to the surface are tales about young, white men from idyllic country towns who, when the whistle blows, blindly throw themselves over the top. Thankfully, a handful of historians and fiction writers are starting to explore different war narratives.' (Introduction)