Winfale Park

Penny Taylor, from London's East End, finds herself part of the struggling Hapless family, living in a caravan park in the Illawarra on the south coast of New South Wales. She is kept busy with three young children, two of whom belong to Dudley Hapless, her present partner and a professional basketball player with the Hawks. Dudley has four brothers, Dick, Rob, Bill and Bruce, and a younger sister named Rosie. Dick is a motor mechanic who seemingly cares only about cars and motor racing, Bill is working in Sydney as an architect and has mortgage problems, Rob is presently serving a prison sentence at Silverwater for his part in an armed robbery and Bruce, who works in a pet shop in Warrawong, is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. Young Rosie, an apprentice hairdresser, is a breath of fresh air in the family, pure and innocent. Her mum's recent death caused her much sadness and she is now working hard to try and keep her grown-up family together. When Penny discovers that one of her children has an aggressive form of leukaemia, Rosie finds herself unmarried and pregnant and Bruce adds a further complication by choosing a very unwise direction, the family teeters on the brink of disintegration. Years of frustration and disinterest are gradually cast aside as each family member finds a way to lend support to these personal crises that are bigger than all of them and, along the way, they discover their own strengths and talents. Told from multiple character perspectives, Winfale Park is a personal and emotional home-grown drama about a group of strangers linked only by a surname, who come to remember the meaning of family and why they should do whatever it takes to stay together.
About the Author: Attending both Sydney and Wollongong Universities, Dell Brand has three degrees in education. She taught in state high schools and during that time was recognised with the Minister's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Outstanding Achievement in Education Award from the Australian College of Education. She has always had a keen interest in children with challenging behaviours, and worked for a number of years with the South Coast Wilderness-Enhanced Program aimed at turning around young people's lives. This formed the basis of her thesis. As a teacher in this program, she involved herself in many of her recreational passions including abseiling, rock-climbing, wilderness trekking, canyoning and canoeing. Dell also has a particular interest in family history and history in general. For twenty years she worked as a volunteer at the Kiama Family History Centre and was president of the Ancestral Research group. She also worked as a freelance journalist and has been published in Australia and abroad. She regularly contributed to Camping World, Reveille and Australian Pottery and Ceramics among many others. Dell wrote her first children's book, History's a Mystery, in 2010 and it was short-listed for the Western Australian Young Reader Awards. The books proved popular with 10-12 year olds and three more followed - History's a Mystery Again, History's Still a Mystery and History's a Mystery Once More. Each one aims to teach about great events and peoples from the past through exciting and often dangerous time-travel adventures. Her first historical fiction for adults, A Voice to be Heard is set in early Australia. Joey and Maddy Gower find themselves unable to stay in England and emigrate in 1839. They are determined to live outside the confines of the Victorian Age and come to have a lasting impact on the fledgling town of Melbourne. This book was published in the USA and received 5-star reviews from 'Readerviews'. The sequel, Cry to the Wind, was launched last month. It continues the story of these two women as their lives are swept up in the fervour of the Victorian gold rush. Her latest book is Winfale Park.