New Releases by Ron Thomas

The Solly Trilogy is a tale of three generations, from a boy’s enlistment as cabin boy on a Yankee packet ship, the Delaware Belle, plying between Plymouth and New York in the early nineteenth century, through the drought, conflict and financial strife of the 1890’s in Australia to the impact on ordinary folk of the great war and its aftermath. The story is based around the lives of ordinary people of three generations surviving a world that was changing faster than at any time before. It was an era in which the world was shrinking and the affairs of men of diverse nations began to break down centuries-old barriers of class and inherited wealth. We denizens of the 21st century can easily forget that the accomplishments of every generation are built upon those of generations that came before them. Similarly, the values we hold dear were first learned at the knees of our parents. The Solly Trilogy is about a time not just before aircraft, the computer and the internet, but before labour-saving devices we take for granted today had been invented. How did people live in times such as these? These were resourceful people, adaptable people in times that required a surfeit of both of these admirable qualities. Solly’s Trilogy is designed to be read in any order, but it is suggested that you begin with ‘Solly’s Way’, the story of Solly’s arrival at Wallangulla as an old man and his impact on a struggling Australian outback family. ‘Solly’s Legacy’ tells of the legacy of caring, respect and ingenuity the old man left for the next generation. Finally, ‘Solly’s Journey’ completes the loop by telling the story of a cabin boy whose travels under sail, as he grows to manhood, lead him to cross great oceans of the world. After travelling the American west, a shipwreck brings him to a land down under where he finds a wide brown land worth exploring. The Solly Trilogy is set in a period when events in a more remote Europe changed life in Australia. Today, events before the Great War seem like some far-off good old days when life in the Australian outback was simple and wholesome. I’m grateful to my grandfather and his mates who loved a yarn about the old days and could no doubt spin a few tall ones to a gullible lad. They helped me gain many valuable insights into how it really was back then and became the inspiration behind the Solly Trilogy.