The Age ‘Book of the Year: Lech Blaine’s Australian Gospel

Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin

Lech Blaine’s Australian Gospel: A Family Saga has won The Age ‘Book of the Year Award’  for non-fiction.

In Blaine’s ‘Author’s Note’, he states that his memoir is a work of ‘creative non-fiction, not history or journalism’. This is enlightening, as otherwise I might have concluded that this saga was, indeed, a work of investigative journalism, as it is constructed on comprehensive research and scholarship, a formidable number of interviews, and an intimate knowledge of his subject. This true story benefits from Blaine’s grasp of the psychological realities, fears and frailties that mark and shape his characters.

However Blaine defines his literary genre, he succeeds superbly in presenting, defining and interpreting the immense complexities of his life growing up. His parents welcomed into their lives five foster children and, consequently, experienced abusive threats from Michael and Mary Shelley, the biological parents of three of the Blaine’s foster children. How these working-class parents, Lenore and Tom Blaine, cope with this invasive onslaught is a major theme of the book

Lenore and Tom opened their hearts and home to the three Shelley siblings, Steven, John and Hannah, all of whom were malnourished and failed to thrive with their birth parents. A fourth child, Elijah Shelley, despite the Blaine’s request to have him join his siblings, lives with a different foster family. The Blaine family also includes foster children Trent, who is autistic, and Rebecca, who needs special care. Lenore Blaine nurtures the five foster children and her own son Lech with unconditional love.

Lenore and Tom Blaine, the true-blue battlers enveloping Lech and their foster children in a warm embrace, are juxtaposed with the birth parents of the three Shelley siblings. Michael, a narcissistic and intellectual Christian fanatic has a messiah complex and an overwhelming sense of his own moral superiority. He controls his long-suffering wife Mary’s every word and action.

On the other hand, Lenore and Tom Blaine are characterised as true-blue battlers, enveloping Lech and their foster children in a warm embrace. The tranquillity of their lives is constantly threatened by the ‘Shelley gang’ and their destabilising attempt to ‘kidnap’ their own children. Mary Shelley, an evangelising Christian as fanatical as her husband, has an interesting Jewish lineage. Her father, Sidney Newgrosh, an Ashkenazi Jew described in the book as ‘a tall olive-skinned jeweller in London’s West End,’ found sanctuary in England after his family fled pogroms in Ukraine. He married a Welsh girl and their younger daughter, Carole Sue Newgrosh, was born in 1943. The couple divorced and Sidney abducted his three children (Ann, Carole and David) from their boarding school and flew with them to Australia. The runaway family resided in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and settled into the Jewish community. They joined Temple Emanuel in Woollahra, where Carole celebrated her batmitzvah.

Sidney opened the Chelsea Restaurant on Macleay Street in Kings Cross, a popular venue where Prime Minister Robert Menzies was a regular guest. When Carole was16, Sidney threw a party for his two daughters at the Chelsea and TV star Lionel Long entertained the crowd and dazzled the teenage Carole. A few years later, when Lionel and Carole married, their wedding photos were featured prominently in the Sydney Morning Herald. Their daughter Amberwren was born in 1965 and their son Roman in 1968. Tensions escalated and Carole left the marriage, taking her children with her.

When Carole met and married Michael Shelley, she changed her name to Mary, the beginning of an evangelising transformation under Michael’s tutelage and control that brought ongoing loss and suffering in its wake. Social Welfare removed the malnourished Shelley children from their parents’ care, who were clearly unable to provide for their needs. The Shelleys spent decades attempting to get them back, devising plans to kidnap their children, who were living normal and happy lives. In the process, they harassed politicians, clergy, bureaucrats and the foster families with threatening letters and visits that landed both Shelleys in prison and, eventually, in psychiatric institutions.

Despite the tension and fear the Shelleys’ aggressive actions generated, there is an authorial undercurrent of empathy for Mary Shelley’s profound and lifelong attachment to her children and her excruciating pain of separation. As she yearned for the children removed from her care, her emotional suffering intensified, and her mental health deteriorated.

On the surface, this family saga seems a clearcut tale of saints versus sinners, or nurture versus nature, but the lines between these categories are increasingly blurred, due in large part to the author/narrator’s objective presentation of competing facts and arguments, a singular feat for someone so deeply enmeshed and at the centre of the Blaine family dynamic, and experiencing the effect on the family of the Shelley’s unrelenting satanic campaign. But Lech’s position in the heart of the family also ensures that, as the actions unfold, he captures events vividly and records them accurately, As a key witness to the evolving dramas, he notes his impressions and counter-balances these with views expressed by witnesses to a range of disturbing incidents the Shelleys unleash on the families and on the bureaucracy and representatives of foster childcare services. How the Blaine family withstands this onslaught and how they succeed, despite the pressures, in maintaining a warm, loving, protective and stable home environment makes for a gripping story.

The huge cast of characters can be somewhat confusing at times. Challenged by an extremely convoluted narrative, however, the author steers the reader through the tortuous emotional territory, exploring the psychological terrors that threaten to destabilise the Blaine’s foster children. On this battlefield of fear, paranoia and distrust, there are winners and, sadly, there are losers.

The author delves into the inner workings of foster care, where those concerned with the placement of children make critical decisions that change lives for better or worse. Whether intentional or not, this story has an added resonance in Australia where the sorrow of Indigenous stolen generations is still deeply felt. While the children in this book are not Indigenous, many Australians are sensitive to these issues, having learned at first-hand the cost of a dislocated and fractured childhood, the pain of parents who mourn the loss of children, and the wounds that sometimes never heal.

With intelligence, persistence and a sure grasp of the intricate twists and turns of his narrative, Lech Blaine has produced a thoughtful tour de force that documents the story of his family. ‘‘It was an extremely complex story to tell,’ Lech writes. ‘At all times, I have sought to capture the emotional truth of what happened.’ He succeeds brilliantly.

 

Australian Gospel: A family saga

Lech Blaine

Black Inc.  2024