In Whom We Trust

Although set a hundred years ago, John Clanchy’s new novel powerfully captures the devastating and persistent reality of a fundamental flaw in the role of our major institutions. Central to In Whom We Trust is James Pearse, an essentially good but circumstantially weak man, who is forced to examine his role at the St Barnabas Home for Children, an orphanage that has betrayed the individuals entrusted to its care. He must face the devastating wider consequences of a life of moral equivocation.

Clanchy has been writing fiction for forty years—In Whom We Trust is his twelfth book—and has won numerous local, state, national and international awards for his novels, novellas and short stories.

• Shortlisted for the 2021 ACT Book of the Year award

About the Author

John Clanchy has written five novels and many long stories. The collection, Vincenzo’s Garden, won seven awards, including the ACT Book of the Year and the Steele Rudd Award. The novel The Hard Word also won the ACT Book of the Year. International Awards for his stories include The Commonwealth Literature and language Studies Prize (Europe), The Antipodes Prize for Short Fiction, The PEN Air-NZ Prize. Two crime novels If God Sleeps and And Hope to Die (co-authored with Mark Henshaw) have appeared with Gallimard in France and Rowohlt in Germany – the latter becoming a German bestseller.