'Straya' is a book of hauntings, a parliament of ghosts, public and private, the story of a small-town Orpheus lost in the brusque shadows of a land-down-under. It s a treatise on grief, atrocity and human tragedy seen through the eyes of a bewildered mourner in exile, a travelogue of land and soul unravelling the complex carnage of our redacted histories, a song-book of love and hate, of sorrow and celebration, of cold despair and stubborn hope.