So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

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.