This year I started a Book Club I’ve called Birdies, Bogies and Books at my golf club.

Its one of the many clubs (other than golf) that members can become involved with and as I love to read and share my love of reading, I created the group, curate the book list and then run the meetups.

I enjoy doing this so when I was approached by Harper Collins publisher to invite Alli Parker who was the author of the book we were reading in September, naturally I agreed.

It was lovely to meet her and over lunch learn more about her work. She’s a scriptwriter who’s written for many well known television series in Australia. However, she wrote her debut novel At The Foot of the Cherry Tree about her grandparents Gordon and Cherry (Naboko) Parker.

Cherry was a Hiroshima survivor and met Gordon at Kure when the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces were in Japan after the war. Gordon went through considerable legal and political hoops to get Cherry recognised as his wife and to come out to Australia. You can imagine how difficult life would have been for a Japanese war bride in 1950s Australia.

The novel was well received by the book club and after a few initial questions, I opened the floor to everyone to ask their questions. Everyone also had their novels with them to be signed and feedback positive. It was also a great turnout.

I did not do my own review of the novel on my YouTube channel but I may do so in the near future. It’d make an excellent book for other book clubs.

I’m looking forward to running more author events in 2025.

Here’s Alli talking about her book.