Peter Hodson 
Murphy’s Last Law 

Murphy’s Last Law:’If child abuse can happen, child abuse will happen.’Two sets of siblings-both with an elder brother and a younger sister-from opposite sides of the world, with completely different backgrounds, and yet their lives are quite similar.London, 1944. John (10) and Margaret (7) are evacuated and rendered orphans after being bombed out. After three years in an orphanage, they are shipped to Western Australia to become part of the so called ‘Lost Generation’.At the same time, Barega and Gedala, part-aboriginal siblings, of the same age and gender as of the English orphans, are swept into the anglicisation programme and become part of what was later described as the ‘Stolen Generation’.The siblings are separated and they suffer through intolerable abuse and shocking circumstances. Will they succumb to the horrors of this life that they have been thrown into, a life none of them had any choice in? Or will they be able to eventually escape the images that haunt them?Through the peril of the Vietnam War, the brothers’ lives become entwined and they form a close and trusting friendship bonded by a close comradery, having suffered a similar teenage upbringing.Read as this friendship not only brings the brothers but also the sisters together and eventually romantic bonds are formed.