Far from Me #author Adrian McLean

On the 3rd of September, 1939, the lives of two young Australians are changed forever when Neville Chamberlain declares that Britain is at war with Germany.

On his farm in the outback of Victoria, fifteen-year-old Keith is wide-eyed at the news and bursting to hear what his schoolmates make of it. The announcement lands differently on the west coast, where the plans of Johnny and his young bride are put on hold when life in their hometown of Perth is disrupted by a huge influx of US troops and military hardware. Johnny's loyalties are torn between devotion to his new wife and duty to his country.

Three years into the conflict, the paths of Keith and Johnny converge when they meet up in Canada during training for the Australian Air Force. Both are carrying scars from unexpected loss.

Their friendship survives the excesses of Montreal nightlife, a treacherous Atlantic crossing and a sobering encounter with the makeshift drabness of wartime England. During bitter fighting at the turn of 1945, they join a rookie crew under the benevolent leadership of a veteran captain and find unexpected comfort in a sleepy market town in Southern England.

The crew graduate to operational missions flying Lancaster bombers. Through countless nerve-shredding moments, they discover the fine margins between survival and disaster before getting to savor the wild, euphoric release of VE Day.

But fate is not finished with them yet.

To connect with Adrian ....
https://austinmacauleyusa.com/author/adrian-mclean
https://www.instagram.com/farfromme_book/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Enjoy this.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Well, it's good morning for me, but I know it's good afternoon for you. Adrian McLean, welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It's evening here in Ontario, Canada.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Ah, evening time. Well, I appreciate you staying up to talk to me today. Congratulations. Your book Far From Me is out now. Adrian, tell us all about your book.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Okay. Well, thank you, Joe. Um it's uh the book is historical fiction. It's about World War II. It features uh the two main protagonists are two young Australian men who get drawn into uh volunteering for the Air Force uh in Australia. Uh one of them is a 15 years old when the war starts. He lives in near Warwicknobile in a small community on a farm, on his family farm near Warwicknobile, and he is excited at the news, and he can't wait to talk to his mates. The other one, Johnny, lives in Perth in Western Australia, and he has uh was recently married. He has a bride of six months, and the news hits them like a sledgehammer, so they're quite dismayed at that news. So the the book, um one of the key themes of the book is how these two young guys, first of all, how they come to meet and become tight friends, but it's also one of the core questions that I explore in the book is how do these guys deal with the terrible odds of making it through the war in one piece? The chances are that 60% of the people who volunteered for the Air Force, the Australian Air Force and the Royal Air Force, don't make it. So it's it's a kind of an examination of what does it take to keep themselves whole in the face of those really pretty daunting odds. Um it's it also sort of tracks their journey through the war. What is it that uh leads them to volunteer in the first place? All kinds of social pressures, but both of them sign up, having experienced significant loss in their lives. Not that they reveal that to each other, but they're carrying that with them into the into the conflict. Uh so the war, so the book follows tracks their inner journeys and their outer journeys through the war as they train, they they meet each other in Canada during training, they cross the Atlantic together on one of these troop ships, and it's a pretty scary experience doing it with all the U-boats that were in the North Atlantic. Uh, they they uh experienced the culture shock of England in wartime, drab, makeshift, awful circumstances, you know, trains waiting forever, um, horrible food, you know, it's a terrible kind of shift of culture for them to adapt to. Um it uh uh the book also portrays the mayhem of combat, of what what it was like for them to actually be in the middle of fighting and bombing and getting through the flak and avoiding enemy fighters. Uh it's not a book about heroes, it's a book about it's trying to portray the reality of their experience. Um the other major theme of the book is uh the impact of these guys leaving their loved ones behind, leaving their communities behind, and entering a very different community in England where conditions are extremely different. Uh there's a you know, there's rationing, there's there's blackouts, there's all kinds of deprivations and difficulties. Uh, and it's quite a shock for them to make that adjustment. But also it's about how they discovered some of the pleasures of England, the pubs and the dance halls, and and they, you know, and it talks about the new friends that they make, the new people they meet. Uh another major theme is about what is it, what is it like for host countries when there's a massive influx of overseas troops that suddenly uh invade the country and disrupt you know the normal traditions, the everyday traditions, and layered on top of that, of course, is all of the angst and the uncertainty and difficulties of the actual of coping with the war. Um the the the cliche is that the the troops are oversexed, overpaid, and over here.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

And so there's an awful lot of trying to set set the story in the context of the zeitgeist of a country at war. Um sort of surreal juxtaposition of of the the awfulness and the the uncertainty and the fear and the air raids and so on, with these kind of crazy uh mad adventures and and romances and dances. So that's about that. Uh it's uh yes, so that's the main sort of yeah that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

And it's that idea of um like the war war and wartime and the impacts on not only the individuals, like you said, but the generations of wartime. Yeah, there's so much the ripples, it's yeah, it's it's a wonderful um ripples, the ripples, and and the effects on the people they leave behind, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah, and and and all of the all of this sort of the upset that goes with that and the difficulty of communicating with each other, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

So yeah. And Adrian, can you tell us a bit about you as an author? Um, we were chatting before we hit record, you know, you're you've written other works. I want you to share about that, and and um yeah, how you got to to now writing in this space. Tell us a bit about you.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Um okay, thank you. Well, I'm a retired academic and consultant. Um, my field was organization change, organization development. In particular, I specialized in uh how organization cultures change and how can we support those processes in organizations. So I did a lot of work in England, also other parts of the world, including Australia, which was wonderful. Got to travel to Australia a few times. Um so uh so that's my background, and uh, and I've written uh written on that quite a lot, both books and uh journal articles. So there's sort of academic writing, which is so different from my experience of writing fiction. And I have to tell you, writing fiction has been a joy. Yeah, it took me six years to write this book, uh, and uh it was the most uh I was totally immersed in it. I was quite taken over by the story, yeah, uh, and um delighted by the experience. Uh and I uh the more I got into it, the more the story wrote itself. And I found myself I was I was more or less listening, eavesdropping into what the characters were talking about and capturing and um uh getting drawn into the emotion of it all, you know, and uh and the highs and the lows. Um so I found it a hugely enjoyable experience, but also terribly moving. I think the one thing I take away is it it has given me a much richer appreciation and personal uh of how and why the war was so figural in my parents' lives, yeah, right up until the days they died. Yeah, uh it was it made such an impact on them, and I can fully understand that now. I didn't understand it before, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

And I think I think that point you said, you know, that's what you want. I'm sure that's what as a reader you want to get out of the book that under a level of understanding and appreciation around yeah, what that war generation went through.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yes, yes, and it's it's in part, I'm I'm writing this for my grandchildren to try and help them understand what life was every life was like during that period of time. Uh and uh so it's in a sense, the book is also a social history.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, yeah. And Adrian, if we're watching you anywhere in the world and we're curious about your work, we're curious about you. Um, I was looking at your Instagram page, so I know you're on Instagram, uh, or the books on Instagram. Tell us where how do we get curious about you and the book? I'm gonna put some links in the show notes. Where can we get your book?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Uh well, on all the major platforms, Amazon.au, yeah, uh Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Uh I'll put the link in. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Can you? Okay, okay. We'll send you, we'll send you the details of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Um and uh what's the publisher in Australia? Dimmux.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Dimmix. Okay, great. Yeah, no, I'll put some links.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

There's also a link to the uh the publisher, uh, which is Austin McCauley, based in the US, and I can send you those details.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah, no, I've I saw them, so I'm I'm well ahead of you, Adrian. I can put that in for the audience. Um, and Adrian, is the plan to keep writing? I know you said it took six years, but it what I'm hearing is you absolutely loved that journey and and what it what it gave back to you. Would you write again if you found it?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yes, I will. Yes, I'm I'm I I'm having a little bit of a break. Good. Um but in September, in September, I'm gonna get my head down again and I I have an idea for what I'm gonna be writing about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Well, I hope you, I mean, you you're absolutely right. Enjoy launching a book and having interviews and that experience of getting your book out there. Um, but yeah, I would love to have you back for future books. Please come back to Yellow Shell.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Well, what what I what I've been delighted with is the sort of the responses to the book. Yeah, what I've found is is that uh people take very different things from it. That's that's so interesting. Someone says, Well, it's a love story, and yes, that's part of it. But then somebody else says, Well, it it the most interesting part was the experience of flying inside, you know, flying Lancaster bombers.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And and someone else says, it brings it's bringing history to life.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

And somebody else said, It's wonderful, it takes me back to that era in time. So it's a sort of social nostalgia.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

That's um, that's I found that very pleasing.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah. Well, I think I think you've said it all. I think the audience now just need to go and connect with you and and and and read the book. Thank you so much for joining us, Adrian. All the best.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Thank you, Jo.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Cheers.