Monday, November 13, 2017

Michael Beashel on Blog Tour for Unbound Justice, January 22-February 8

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Unbound Justice
by Michael Beashel

Publication Date: June 19, 2017
eBook & Paperback; 326 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0648056904

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

 

John Leary boards ship in Ireland in 1850, a young carpenter ambitious for a new life in Australia. He sails with revenge in his heart–his beloved sister has been raped by her landlord, William Baxterhouse, who escapes on another ship with even grander plans for success in New South Wales. In Sydney, hard workers like Leary and ruthless newcomers like Baxterhouse find a city fired by the Gold Rush and dedicated to creating the finest buildings in the colony. Leary has a double motive to make his construction company succeed: he has fallen in love with the beautiful Clarissa McGuire, whose family despise him, and Baxterhouse continues to rise in wealth and influence, seemingly untouchable. Meanwhile another woman, Beth O’Hare, is in love with John Leary, and he makes some hard choices–including a climactic showdown with Baxterhouse.

This is the first novel in The Sandstone Trilogy: a new, magnificent view of nineteenth-century Sydney from the ground up. Three novels, Unbound Justice, Unshackled and Succession, span 37 years of Sydney life in the second half of the nineteenth century. They follow the fortunes of 20-year-old John Leary, who in 1850 leaves his rural home in Ireland and sails as an assisted immigrant to New South Wales.

His trade is carpentry but his ambition is boundless. By hard work, talent and opportunism he manages to create his own construction company, never ceasing the struggle to become the biggest and the best. The building industry becomes a metaphor for his chosen city, with its mixture of squalor and grandeur, of corruption and high ideals.

The Sandstone Trilogy is a historical drama with a rich cast of compelling characters. It is also a family saga, in which love, revenge and tragedy all come to influence the Learys’ destiny.

“Well-written and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a love story with a vivid background of those early days of European settlement–and all the drinking, hard work, treachery and jostling for position that was mandatory in those times. You warm to the characters as they make their way in this new land. More of it!” – Wendy O’Hanlon, Australian Provincial Newspapers

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About the Author

Michael Beashel is Sydney-born and his Irish forebears immigrated to New South Wales in 1863 and settled in Millers Point. He spent his youth in Bondi, is married with adult children and lives in Sydney’s inner-west.

Beashel was head of Asset Development for a global accommodation services company registered on the NYSE and has made his mark in some of Australia’s iconic construction companies. In Sydney, he has restored government buildings such as the Customs House and the Town Hall, and completed commercial buildings in the private sector. In SE Asia, he managed a construction division that built apartments and hotels in Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City.

This industry—its characters, clients, trades people, designers and bureaucrats—provides rich material for his writing. He has an eye for the emergence of Sydney’s built form, from the early days of the colony to the present, and a love of construction. He says about his writing, ‘It’s a passion. I revel in using the building industry as a tapestry to weave a great tale seasoned with historic facts and memorable characters. Human shelter is an essential need and I suspect people have a fascination for understanding its context and construction within their societies. Australia still is a young country but there are many, many outstanding building stories.’

Beashel holds a B. App. Science (Building) from Sydney’s UTS and is a member of the NSW Writers’ Centre. Beashel finds his excitement in the design and construction industry, military history and Rugby. He’s sailed in Herons but leaves the racing and honours to other family members!

Unbound Justice is his first novel and the sequels Unshackled and Succession complete the Sandstone Trilogy.

For more information, please visit Michael Beashel’s website.