Kieran Finnane

At the closely guarded and secretive military facility, Pine Gap in Australia's Northern Territory, police arrest six nonviolent activists. Their crime: to step through a fence, lamenting and praying for the dead of war. They call themselves Peace Pilgrims. The Crown calls them a threat to national security and demands gaol time. Their political trials, under harsh Cold War legislation, tell a story of obsessive Australian secrecy about the American military presence on our soil and the state's hardline response to dissent.In Peace Crimes, Alice Springs journalist Kieran Finnane gives a gripping account of what prompts the Pilgrims to risk so much, interweaving local events and their legal aftermath with this century's disturbing themes of international conflict and high-tech war. She asks, what responsibilities do we have as Australians for the covert military operations of Pine Gap and what are we going to do about them?

What is going on in the often troubled town of Alice Springs? "Trouble "goes into the ordered environment of the courtroom to lay out in detail some of the dark disorder in the town's recent history. Men kill their wives, kill one another in seeming senseless acts of revenge, families feud, women join the violence, children watch and learn from the sidelines. Journalist Kieran Finnane follows the stories through witness accounts, recognizing the horror and tragedy of violent events, and the guilt or innocence of perpetrators. She draws on a 25-year practice of journalism in Alice Springs, as well as experience of its everyday life, to add fine grain to the portrait of a town and region being painfully remade.