The Last Thread

Michaelis is four when they first move to Australia, leaving behind the cold and the snow and the mud, the flat grey landscape, his father, his mother’s family, and everything he has ever known.

He is seven when they pack up again and go home, nine when they return to Australia. When you are used to it, leaving is the easiest thing in the world—and where the sea is warm and the days linger, it is easier to forget.

But his stepfather is a bully, and the absence of his real father masks a painful truth. Before long, Michaelis learns that no matter how far you go, your past always follows you, trailing questions in its wake.

Beginning with memory’s first fragments, The Last Thread traces a boy’s journey into adulthood against a backdrop of family secrets, betrayals and unhealed wounds.

Michael Sala was born in the Netherlands in 1975 to a Greek father and a Dutch mother, and first came to Australia in the 1980s. He lives in Newcastle. His critically acclaimed debut, *The Last Thread, *won the 2013 NSW Premier's Award for New Writing and was the regional winner (Pacific) of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.

‘Michael Sala has a rare gift: in prose that takes your breath away, he tells a story of heart-rending sorrow without a trace of sentimentality.’ Raimond Gaita

‘A confronting and compelling story of a family. Sala captures perfectly the puzzled silence of the uncomprehending child in a narrative swollen with unspoken secrets.’ Debra Adelaide

‘A gutsy, moving, beautifully wrought and utterly compelling work.’ Readings Monthly

‘There is so much to praise about this book. Michael Sala’s prose is clear and unadorned, the setting exquisitely rendered, but it is his characters—all of them flawed and complex and deeply, deeply human—who will stay with me for a very long time. I would defy anyone to read this story and remain unmoved. The Restorer is an incredibly powerful novel and, I believe, an important one.’ Hannah Kent on The Restorer