On The Jellicoe Road

Melina Marchetta

Aug 2006 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

Taylor Markham is not a popular choice. She is erratic, has no people skills and never turns up to meetings. Not to mention the incident when she ran off in search of her mother and only got halfway there. But she's lived at Jellicoe School most of her life and as leader of the boarders that's her greatest asset. Especially now the cadets, led by the infamous Jonah Griggs, have arrived. The territory wars between the boarders, townies and cadets are about to recommence. But Taylor has other things on her mind: a prayer tree, the hermit who whispered in her ear, and a vaguely familiar drawing in the local police station. Taylor wants to understand the mystery of her own past. But Hannah, the woman who found her, has suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but an unfinished manuscript about five kids whose lives entwined twenty years ago on the Jellicoe Road . . .

About the author

Melina Marchetta is one of Australia's most successful young-adult novelists and is a best-selling and critically acclaimed author in more than twenty countries and in eighteen languages. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for On the Jellicoe Road, and Melina's screenplay for this book is set to be made into a major film in 2013 with an international cast to be directed by Looking for Alibrandi director Kate Woods. Melina is also developing a television series with writer/director Cathy Randall (Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger) and is a writer for ABC-TV's Dance Academy. Finnikin of the Rock was first published in Australia in 2008 followed in 2010 by the companion novel to her award-winning book Saving Francesca, The Piper's Son, long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and short-listed for many other literary awards in Australia and internationally. Melina is also the author of The Gorgon in the Gully for younger readers. Book Two in the Lumatere Chronicles, Froi of the Exiles, was published in 2011. This year marks the twenty-year anniversary of Melina Marchetta's first novel Looking for Alibrandi, the much-loved Australian classic, which was made into a major motion picture and has sold more than half a million copies in Australia. In her latest books in the Lumatere Chronicles Marchetta continues to explore the politics and emotion of exile from homeland that has characterised all of her novels.