The Catcher Man, the first book in the Dalton family’s story, is written and now being edited. The characters have done their part. It’s my turn to tidy up after them.
The world of The Catcher Man
Parramatta, 1832: Where the story begins
Only four years earlier, convicts had made up almost half of New South Wales’s colonial population. Transportation shaped the colony’s working life, its communities and the buildings people called home. In Parramatta, the Dalton family occupy a hut once used to accommodate convicts.
Along the street laid out between the government domain and the river landing, the earliest convict huts had stood on separate allotments, with garden ground behind them. As the settlement grew, these modest dwellings became part of a town where people established households and sought a dependable living. A place built to accommodate convict labour could also become somewhere to raise a family.
For Samuel and Mary Dalton, that is the life they are making. There are children to raise and daily expenses to meet. Anna and Sam are growing up in a society where opportunity exists alongside sharp distinctions of wealth and status, and where a fresh beginning does not necessarily mean leaving the past behind.
Road and river connect Parramatta to Sydney and its busy harbour. Around The Rocks, merchants’ warehouses and substantial houses stand near the homes and businesses of working families. Former convicts have established shops, practised trades and raised children here. Their lives complicate the easy distinctions between criminal and respectable, and between those who belong and those still seeking a place.
Across these connected communities, the colony’s prosperity depends on people who do not share equally in its rewards. For families such as the Daltons, the larger questions of freedom and opportunity come down to something immediate: what kind of future can they make for their children?
In a modest Parramatta home, Samuel and Mary Dalton are raising their children, Anna and Sam. It is here that we meet them, and where The Catcher Man begins.
Beyond the family home
As Anna and Sam grow older, their hopes bring them into conflict with people whose influence reaches further than their own. Anna’s determination to build an independent life and Sam’s developing sense of justice lead them towards different choices. Both must decide whom to trust, when to stand their ground and what they are prepared to risk for the people they love.
Follow The Catcher Man towards publication, with occasional updates from my writing desk and discoveries from the history behind the story.
