And so um, I knew that I really didn't want to be a priest and didn't want to be a celibate, though I could probably manage it. Um, and um, ultimately I left.

Based on an actual incident. Keneally has said he would not now presume to write in the voice of an Aborigine but would have written the story as seen by a white character. He entered St Patrick's Seminary Manly to train as a Catholic priest.

Thomas Michael Keneally AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist playwright and author of non-fiction. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.