At one stage, Leura’s Julian Leatherdale started to wonder whether his own children might beat him to the publishing punch.
With wife, Claire Corbett, already an accomplished debut author with her lauded literary work When We Have Wings from 2011, and a young son and daughter keen on the written word, it was clear he had to get a hurry on.
“I was starting to feel the pinch there, so I was so thrilled when my agent read half the book and said: ‘Keep going’.”
His 500-page debut novel hits the shelves this month after two years of researching and writing.
Palace of Tears is a sweeping historical novel set in the Blue Mountains. It’s a story about love, betrayal and family secrets and starts in 1914 and moves to the modern day, even covering the 2013 Mountains bushfires and the annual winter solstice festival, Winter Magic.
Part history lesson, part detective story, the multiple-voiced melodrama is inspired by the story of the recently relaunched Hydro Majestic Hotel, originally founded by Mark Foy of Foy’s Department Store. Leatherdale’s main character is Adam Fox, a charismatic showman and ruthless hotelier and his palace, known locally as Fox’s Folly, was the place to be seen.
“The good thing was that there wasn’t a lot of material about the Hydro, so I decided to dip into the files and read as much as I wanted for the purposes of the story. The most valuable source was an interview with Foy’s granddaughter.
“There was a lot of work in terms of structuring it. I put my characters through hell. It’s unashamedly commercial. I’m not out to win any literary prizes. First and foremost I wanted it to be entertaining and engaging and I wanted to pay some tribute to the Mountains, its wildness and beauty.”
The story shows the glamour of the hotel world but also focuses on the anti-German hysteria during World War I in the Mountains and in Sydney.
“I always had a bee in my bonnet about the treatment of Germans during the war,” he said. “We’re living in similar testing times. The government failed the test of protecting its citizens.”
Leatherdale studied history at university and also wrote popular history for years, including on Time Life’s Australians at War series.
For several years Leatherdale was also the PR manager at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School, which has helped with grasping the hotelier world.
“I am grateful I have spent time in the real world. I am 55, I have worked in lots of different industries, in government, TV, research and the hotel school and I’ve seen lots of powerful people up close, people with whom I don’t share world views and that’s been incredibly valuable.
“I think some writers can become incredibly isolated ... if they haven’t had some exposure to the rough and tumble of the real world,” he said.
In his book he thanks Blue Mountains local studies librarian John Merriman; Mary Shaw, granddaughter of the Hydro’s founder Mark Foy for her “rich source of stories,” and his mother, Helen, to whom the book is dedicated.
“My mother actually had a German boyfriend in the 50s in a country town, whose Dad had served in the Luftwaffe. The boyfriend’s brother had been beaten up in school. When I gave the book to her on Mother’s Day, she burst into tears.”
Leatherdale says his agent has taken the book to the London Book Fair and hopes to sell it in Europe.
