The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin

Publisher's Synopsis

There are animals in the camouflage of undergrowth; they forage this final, fading night hour. They hear the grunting men and lift their heads, listen, then bound away: the scrub, the bushes shake and wave, signalling their invisible trajectories.

After decades-old human bones are discovered in the Tasmanian wilderness, Antonia Kovács returns home with questions for her father, a retired police inspector in Queenstown.

Meanwhile, Tom Pilar receives news of an inheritance, from a man he barely remembers, one of his father's friends from the early days, newly arrived in the island and looking for work.

Set amidst the harsh terrain of the timber and ore industries of the west coast, The Unearthed is a haunting novel about the past and its quiet but tenacious grip on the present. It reveals the tragic connections between the disparate lives of post-war migrants and local workers, and the fallibility of memory, the illusion of truths and the repercussions on real lives.

My Review of The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin

“Even the dead come back and get into the paper. Sometimes even a pile of bones, out in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, down a ravine. Front-page headlines in the west coast locals, then some page threes, below the fold, in the state and nationals. A Brazilian couple on a hiking holiday stumbled upon them. Partial skull, teeth, some vertebrae, femur, scapula, pelvis, broken ribs and phalanges scattered about…”

The discovery of some human remains in Tasmania’s remote north west is the kicking off point of this moving and atmospheric tale. The Unearthed spans three generations and pays tribute to some hard working migrants who left their homeland in Croatia for a more promising life in Australia.

The story is told as a series of brief short stories that present a new character who plays a crucial part in the ongoing story. It’s then up to us to work out how they tie into the unfolding mystery. 

Tom Pilar finds that he’s named in Slavko Cicak’s will but he has trouble remembering who Slavko even is. It’s only when he delves deeply into his father’s past that the memories come flooding back. So he makes the trip to the remote town of Queenstown to spread the ashes and take a look at the house he has just inherited.

Slavko Cicak was born in Croatia and lived there until he was old enough to flee as the country was being ripped apart by war. His life of petty crime nets him one big payout that he uses to get to Australia and, on the ship he meets the woman who would be his wife. Together they have a daughter and are happy until the day she is run down and killed by a hit and run driver. Driven by grief and despair he won’t rest until he finds the person responsible.

As each person is introduced and their life’s history is examined, as well as revealing a full and interesting past filled with hopes, dreams and expectations, we also learn that there are mysteries hidden away in their pasts. As disparate as their lives appear, they’re all drawn together in the rugged north western Tasmanian hinterland. 

The Unearthed is built around tremendously strong character development with each successive person introduced and then exhaustively brought to life in exquisite detail. It’s funny, though, as I got to know some of the main characters, I realised I didn’t like some of them, but I could sympathise with their plight and could understand the actions that they end up taking. The good, the bad and the downright ugly you can’t help but be drawn in by stories of tragedy and the fight to overcome adversity no matter how difficult the odds.

I thought this was a masterfully told tale that seamlessly combines the terrible actions of its characters with the forbidding harsh beauty of the land in which it’s set. While I wouldn’t exactly characterise it as a crime story, crimes are committed and there’s plenty of suffering and hardship. It’s real and heartfelt and very well conceived.