Revelation Beach

 Revelation Beach

Reviewed By  Nan van Dissel       October 2, 2025

 

Author  Susan Francis

Distributor:      Wild Dingo Press
ISBN:                 9781925893892
Publisher:         Wild Dingo Press
Release Date:   October 2025  

   Website:   https://www.wilddingopress.com.au/shop/p/9781925893892

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As the fifty-year anniversary of the execution of the five innocent Australian journalists, known as the Balibo Five during an Indonesian incursion into East Timor approaches, the launch of Susan Francis’s compelling psychological thriller “Revelation Beach” is very timely.

This comprehensively researched novel weaves a page turning narrative, which not only exposes the destruction resulting from the 1975 invasion of East Timor and the murder of the ‘Balibo Five’ by Indonesian militia, but also the less than honorable stance and role in the shameful cover up of events at this time, undertaken by the Australian Government.    

After 44-year-old interpreter Dr Eleanor Freeman daughter of the deceased Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia, survived a house fire in which her beloved Indonesian step mother, Ida died, she is determined to understand and come to terms with the role Ida played in the 1975 invasion; where was she in the 22 years she was missing?  Was Ida an Indonesian spy, did she betray the Balibo Five or was she also a victim of the atrocities committed on the people of East Timor by the Indonesian soldiers?  

This captivating story, which spans the years 1975 – 2000 is set in both Australia and Timor. As Eleanor learns the truth about what happened during the invasion, the reader is not only confronted with the details of the devastation, but also with the cruelty perpetrated on the population of East Timor.

I highly recommend this book, as I am sure that those readers who have little knowledge about the death of the journalists and the wholesale slaughter of the East Timor people, will be inspired to research the relatively new nation of Timor-Leste.    

Fiction, Historical, Thriller