Kay Bell

A decent man in an indecent time ... When Jack Furey has his 100th birthday celebrations forced upon him, his mind turns to his experience of WWII as a police sergeant in 1942 in Far North Queensland. As Sergeant Furey of the Wangamba Police, he welcomed the arrival of the Americans to set up an Air Force base near the new RAAF base outside town. Despite personal misgivings about the separation of the black soldiers from the whites' camp, Furey gains the agreement of the US colonel to co-operate with local law enforcement. But with so many soldiers around, the town changes. A new Americans-only dancehall is only the start of the trouble. Among rumours of prostitution, teen pregnancies and backyard abortions, the bodies start to pile up. When the wife of a returned Australian soldier claims a 'blackfella' murdered him in their home, Furey is determined to uncover the truth - no matter how unwelcome the US brass and local dignitaries find his investigations.

Kay Bell's poems in Diary of an Intercessor are hymns, songs, odes and elegies that grace the difficult subjects: tough childhoods, parenting, ancestry, race and class in America. Though the Bible is referenced, the poems create their own biblical tone; casting spells to ward off evil, protect the new generation and confess the truth in fierce and stark vernacular. In the land where Trayvon Martin was murdered, Jacob Lawrence painted the Great Migration and Langston Hughes inspired dreams, this poet is courageous and fearless with language and images to paint the streets and islands of the countries she has lived in and moved through. The call towards home the reader discovers, finally rests in the poems themselves. Bell is a traveller through time, family and ancestry and her poems are a call to follow her on that journey. -Michelle Valladares, Author of Nortada, the North Wind