shepory crossing: christopher’s story

This book continues the Shepory Crossing trilogy, commenced in Jim’s Story. It centres on the life of Christopher Gregory, son of Jim and Elise. It follows him as he joins the Australian war effort against the Japanese onslaught in 1941 and his subsequent incarceration as a prisoner of war in Changi and on the Burma Railway. Post-war he tries to settle down back home at Shepory Crossing. He marries Anne from Tarenvale and they eventually have a daughter, Jennifer.

The young family moves to the city and is soon swept up in the social, youth and sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Christopher’s world is turned upside down when Jennifer sinks into a sexual morass of her own making. But more traumas are to come. He discovers the older daughter he’d unknowingly fathered during the panics of pre-invasion Singapore then faces the challenge of keeping his two families satisfied without compromising his marriage to Anne or his ongoing support to Jennifer. Anne’s growing feminism and the sexual revolution raging around them add more layers of confusion to Christopher’s life and add to the pressure he already feels from so many directions.