Woven Fragments

Book 3 in the Veiled Thread Series 

In this concluding chapter of The Veiled Thread Series, Harry has changed, the journey has been long. From a brief association with his grandfather just before he died, and a meeting with a cousin he never knew existed, to realisation that his life so far has been one long obsession with himself, Harry hopes for liberation from the darkness. 

The story takes Harry and his new-found cousin on a search for evidence of the fate of Jimmy, aboriginal stockman, friend and close confident of Harry’s grandfather, a journey that takes them from the high pastures of the Australian Alps, through the deep forests of the southern mountains of New South Wales, to the realm of displaced first nation people at the coast.

This is a story that follows Harry’s search and discovery of himself, along the way revealing the shocking truth about the true intergenerational cost of war. 

Harry’s search takes him on an emotional roller coaster ride to places amongst the living and the dead, always with the hope he can restore belief in himself, and bring love into his life.

Praise for Woven Fragments and The Veiled Thread Series

Judith Flitcroft
Author, Stephen Twartz’s new book, Woven Fragments, is presented in masterful language, mystery and ghosts.
Harry and Jessica set out to walk in the footsteps of her Aboriginal grandfather, Jimmy. The roadmap of discovery makes them vulnerable to many experiences they encounter – “the spirits keep malign forces at bay.” In the quest, Harry finds a cave of ancient art and contemporary drawings and stumbles on an old diary written by Jimmy – “a bible that defined a thousand generations.” Jimmy’s window to the past, exposes the misdemeanours of war and its consequences – “We can heal ourselves by understanding what those before us have been through.”

There is great beauty seen on their journey – a “vast morning curtain draped about the horizon.” These descriptions leave the reader with a sense of calm against the horrors and revelations of Jimmy’s past, and the book becomes uplifting and one of hope for the future.

Professor Rebecca Dodge: Mid State University, Texas

The beauty of this book is where it leaves us. Harry, Jessica, and Anika are together, and the journey to find Jimmy’s resting place is finally concluded. All three experience a sort of spiritual sending that provides a sense of release. All of the new responsibilities and complications surrounding Harry are still there, but he now understands “his own part in the continuum.” His shared journey and the support of both Jessica and Anika have given him “licence to submit to the present, to an abandonment of the self-destructive, to the acceptance of love.”

There are so many deeply personal insights exposed in this book. Author Twartz makes the self-introspection meaningful and powerful, tying it deeply and effectively to the journey, to the action, and to each character. The first book in the series sent me on a journey of my own, and provided me with perspectives on my own behavior and its antecedents. I have to agree with Jessica. “What matters is understanding the past and how it’s led us here. What matters is how we use what we’ve learned, how this can all mend the future.” This book concludes with support for continuing our journey towards understanding, our search for reconciliation within ourselves and with others close to us. I am encouraged to continue my own journey.

The Severed Cord

The sequel to The Veiled Thread

Harry, grandson of a WW1 Light Horse veteran, feels like he is drowning: drowning in emotion or rather the lack of it, drowning in the expectations of others, drowning in failed relationships. Who can he turn to, where can he find a solution to the mess that is his life?

Jimmy, an aboriginal stockman, is cajoled into a war. WW1 rages in Europe, spilling over into Palestine, a conflict he doesn’t understand, a conflict that has nothing to do with him.

The lives of two men, generations apart, come together through the trauma of war and overt prejudice, and the phenomenon of intergenerational suffering.

This is not only a story of degradation and despair, but also of the resurrection of hope through gratitude, acceptance and a belief in the power of good.

The tale interweaves Jimmy’s story with the distress of the current generation, where Harry’s relationships fail and his life seems without foundation in the shifting sands of a fast, ever-changing modern world. Jimmy accompanies the two sons of his employer to Palestine in 1917, to a fight against the Turks. That conflict inevitably forces him to witness and do terrible things, deeds so against his nature and beliefs, that he returns from the war a broken man, unable to accept the love of his family, detached from everything that he holds dear.

This fictional novel is firmly imbedded in actual events of the 1917-18 Palestinian campaign and explores the human response to the phenomenon of epigenetics, where the deeds of the past actively influence the behaviour of current generations, some five or six generations removed from the original trauma. The narrative alludes therefore, to the trials of first people everywhere, those displaced by invasion (eg Australia, North and South America), those dispossessed by greed and intolerance.

Jimmy is eventually lost to the world, but Harry has a chance of redemption, through his examination of his family’s history and pursuit of past truths. The story follows the root causes of Harry’s dysfunction, through the battles fought by his grandfather and Jimmy in Palestine and the inter-war years and highlights Jimmy’s fight against prejudice in Australia.

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The Veiled Thread

Eiric O’Sullivan walked his horse the last few feet, up the steep rocky path to the top of the hill. A brisk cool breeze blew across the hilltop, bracing after the warmth of the climb in the lee of the hill. This was where he was meant to be. He knew it, felt it in the marrow of his bones. 

But fate would have it otherwise. 

Two men’s lives, one caught up in the hysteria of a war, both caught in a web of their infidelities and self-doubt, separated by a generation, bound together by the horrors of an insane conflict. 

At the core of this tale is Eiric O’Sullivan and his fateful journey, with his two brothers and a resourceful, laconic aboriginal man, through war in Palestine, a war that leads to the death of one brother, estrangement of another and the ruin of Eiric. 

Graphic depiction of war against the Turks in Palestine is interwoven in the narrative with the gradual degradation of Eiric’s spirit, through the malaise of the Great Depression and into looming war with Nazi Germany. His grandson Harry, also suffers the guilt and self-doubt that was born almost ninety years ago, on the killing fields of the Levant. Harry carries the genes of infidelity, self-loathing and bitterness, the origins of which he cannot comprehend. Its torn legacy has passed through generations to form a new interpretation of that trauma.

In desperation, Harry turns to Eiric, an old man now, in search of the source of his doubts and in the process unleashes a torrent of bitterness and recrimination within a divided family, a family grappling with the fallout from the madness of war. 

The story moves repeatedly from the past to the present to draw parallels between grandfather and grandson until the stories’ climax, when Harry and Eiric understand their parts in the inheritance of the trauma of the past. 

This is a story that delves into the phenomenon of epi-genetics, its impact on successive generations and the destruction of hope in those who have no understanding of the origins of their depression and sense of helplessness.

Publisher

Vanguard Press
Sheraton House Castle Park
Cambridge England
Vanguard Press is an imprint of
Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd.
www.pegasuspublishers.com