Bryce Courtenay's secret letters!

AN EXCITING DISCOVERY LEADS TO A INSIGHTFUL NEW CHAPTER

- Kylie Walters

Bryce Courtenay always used to say “his books belonged under the Christmas tree with the socks and chocolates,” the late author’s wife Christine tells New Idea.

A decade on from Bryce’s death from stomach cancer in 2012, Christine says she still gets inundated with messages from his fans every festive season, asking if there’s a “secret unpublished manuscript” he may have been working on that is yet to come out.

This year, Christine can offer them the next best thing – a biography she penned about her beloved husband’s early years and their life together. Best of all, the book, titled Bryce Courtenay: Storyteller, does include words written by Bryce himself !

It was a project that Christine started in June 2020, after she decided to give her garage a bit of cleaning out.

“I found an old box of letters, over a hundred of them, that I almost threw out,” she explains.