Overview
"Music never stopped a war or put an end to greed or the hunger for power. But it was never supposed to. It has no reason, just as life has no reason. It just is. And what it is is the best that we can hope to be."Music is the talent - and the curse - that spans three generations to link Alex Rivera with the secrets of his family's past. Plucked from obsurity and thrown together with four other musical "prodigies", Alex rides the power of his music to fame and fortune as the lead-guitarist for Asturias, the latest creation of the music industry machine. But will the forces of commercialism and the stresses of fame destroy them, just as a bloody civil war tore apart another group of young idealists six decades earlier? How could anything go wrong? Everything's on track. You're on top of the world. Which is great. As long as you don't look down ...Author Biography
Since 1989, Brian Caswell has written twenty-four books including the best-selling A Cage of Butterflies. His work has received many awards and shortlistings, including the Children’s Peace Literature Award, the Vision Australia, Young Adult Audio Book of the Year Award, the Aurealis Award for science-fiction and fantasy, the Australian Multicultural Children’s Literature Award, the Human Rights Awards, the NSW Premier’s Awards (three times), and he has been included in the prestigious International Youth Library’s ‘White Ravens’ list four times. All his published novels have been listed as Notable Books, by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. He lives on the NSW Central Coast with his wife Marlene.