Luther's Pine

by Molony, John (2004), xii+304pp., ISBN 1 74076 126 X.
AUD$40.91 (Including GST: AUD$45) (softcover)

An autobiographical account of an Australian childhood and young manhood spanning the years of the Great Depression. Opening in Molony's heartland, the Mallee district of Victoria, we see a region of comparatively recent settlement, a place of beauty, bounty and hardship realized through family history and associations, his father's love of Australian poetry and literature, and the patterns of denominational life and the Irish inheritance.

John Molony's childhood ends with the exodus from the land caused by the Depression, a time when Molony attended a series of Catholic boys' schools. Politics and religion are threads that weave in and out of his life throughout his school years, along with the sense of a growing religious vocation. His trip to the Vatican becomes the story of Australians abroad, in which the maintenance of national identity is key to growing up in a foreign place. Catholic history and associations emerge, and the book closes on the day of Molony's ordination.