This is the true story of Australian POWs who created a picture book containing the “secrets to happiness”, such as the importance of friendship, kindness, compassion, generosity, loyalty, faith, courage and hard work.

Robert Drewe’s bestselling short story collection, set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach, marked a major change in the local literature scene when it first hit bookshelves almost forty years ago.

This novel portrays life in the precariously-settled coastal town of Desperance, centring on the Phantom family’s battles with the renegade Eastend mob and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine.