Meet Me at Lennon's

Overview

As university student Olivia Wells sets out on her quest to find an unpublished manuscript by Gloria Graham – a now obscure mid-twentieth century feminist and writer – she unwittingly uncovers details about a young woman found murdered. Strangled with a nylon stocking in the mangroves on the banks of the river in wartime Brisbane, the case soon became known as the river girl murder. Olivia’s detective work exposes the sinister side of that city in 1943, flush with greenbacks and nylons, jealousy and violence brewing between the Australian and US soldiers, which eventually boiled over into the infamous Battle of Brisbane. Olivia soon discovers that the diggers didn’t just reserve their anger for the US forces – they also took it out on the women they perceived as traitors, the ones who dared to consort with US soldiers.Can Olivia rewrite history to bring justice to the river girl whose life was so brutally taken? Even if the past can’t be changed, is it possible to undo history’s erasure?

Author Biography

Melanie is a writer, academic and actor with a DCA in Creative Writing from the University of the Sunshine Coast. She has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Arena Magazine, the Brisbane Times, Overland, and Hecate, and various trade publications. Melanie’s short fiction has also won or been shortlisted for various literary competitions, including the Scarlett Stiletto Awards, S.D. Harvey Short Story Award, the Lane Cove Literary Award and Griffith Review Novella competition. She is the former artistic director of Reality Bites Festival, a non-fiction writers’ festival based on the Sunshine Coast.