Building on Sand by James Parker

Good. Small tear to dustjacket spine.

Hardback with dust jacket.

Can Jude Watson discover the truth about himself? Mysteriously abandoned by his mother at an early age, torn between his loyalties to a nostalgic, Victorian grandfather and to a warm, Irish-Catholic grandmother, and completely captivated by the adolescent capers of his heroic footballer uncle, the young Jude is forced to create many names for himself before he is able to carve his own place in the uncertain, adult world.
Jude Rowe-Jones, St Jude Hope of the Hopeless, JRJ the dashing naval officer, Judd the failed schoolboy-poet, Judah the biblical lion . . . The names accumulate, but a question constantly echoes behind all these facades and all through Jude's life: "Who the hell are you?"
His world is the growing city of Adelaide in the nineteen-fifties. It's postwar Australia, new waves of European migration, the advent of American pop culture with souped-up FJ Holdens, rock-and-roll beach parties and teenage jiving at the drive-in . . . It is a world that is rapidly changing, very much like the shifting sand that Jude played in as a child. Will he discover, among his intense memories of the place where he once lived, his true identity?
Building On Sand is a moving, gripping tale of childhood betrayals and fantasies. Full of humour, irony and pathos, it is also a powerful and vivid depiction of an era.