WORN OUT journalist Nick Eatwell has just got the sack.
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He's tired, his wife has just died of breast cancer and the grief has almost swallowed him whole.
That's when fate steps in, taking the form of South African reporter Susan Vidler, looking for help with a story about Eatwell's great-great uncle, Cyril Blake.
That's the premise of Tony Park's new book, Ghosts of the Past, based on the true story of 24-year-old Australian bloke Edward Lionel Presgrave, who took up arms against a brutal colonial power more than a century ago.
"What captured me was that this young Australian stayed in Africa after the Boer War to fight someone else's war," he said.
"Here is a genuine hero who decided to support this very worthwhile but ultimately lost cause.
"In real life Edward Presgrave was set up and assassinated for fighting for the native people against Germany, it's a story that was begging to be told."
Park has worked as a journalist, a PR consultant, a press secretary and freelance writer. He also served more than three decades in the Australian Army Reserve and lives with one foot in Africa and the other in Australia.
There are parallel's of his own life that Park admits have seeped into the book.
"There's a good adage that says write about what you know, one of my characters is an ex-journalist who went to work in public relations," Park said.
"Journalists are exposed to a lot of diversity, here we have two reporters uncovering the biggest story of their lives and that was fun to write."
In the book, a long-lost manuscript reveals some hard truths about journalist Nick Eatwell's great-great uncle, while in Germany, historian Anja Berghoff is researching the famed desert horses of Namibia when she stumbles on Cyril Blake's story.
Eatwell and Berghoff head to Africa to investigate a legend, but they aren't the only ones looking for the clues to a missing hoard of gold worth killing for.
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Park went to Afghanistan in 2002 as a public affairs officer, he's seen what a war zone can do to a young soldier.
"It was a formative experience for me, it gives you a great appreciation of the cost and gravity of war and it's rare to come back completely unchanged," he said.
"I know guys who did multiple tours because I think in some ways it was easier to keep deploying than to come home and face the issues.
"The character of Blake is into war, he finds it hard to readjust to civilian life and is drawn into another conflict."
The Leader has three copies of Ghosts of the Past to giveaway to the first three people to call 6768 1290 before 10am Thursday and leave their contact details.
Park will give an author talk at Tamworth City Library on August 3 at 2pm.