The Country Schoolmaster – Kate Grenville at Brisbane Writers Festival

A locked-room mystery. A colonial cold case. A family feud. And a cache of 88 letters that pose a series of tantalising questions. Celebrated writer Kate Grenville’s new book is a mesmerising reconstruction of a hundred-year-old true story she discovered in the archives. Was New South Wales schoolteacher Joseph Connor an abusive villain or the victim of a small-town witch hunt? Grenville is at her masterful best here, piecing together the facts as she ruminates on the pleasures and pitfalls of storytelling.