When You See the Emu in the Sky: My Journey of Self-Discovery in the Outback

Although admonished by her parents and friends for leaving her second husband of only 18 months to fend for himself while she pursued an unexplained urge to visit the Outback, Fuller, a nonfiction writer (Nannies, etc.) and playwright living in New York, pulled her son out of his sixth-grade class and headed for Australia. In a rented house in Manly, she encountered Aborigine spirits in the form of strange music and footsteps in the night. A ouija board put her in touch with ""Dwango,"" a spirit dwelling in the basement, who told her she would meet a man who would take her someplace she needed to go. Soon, Max, a full-blooded Aborigine, took Fuller and her son ""Back o'Bourke"" (beyond the point of no return), to the Outback where he grew up. Initially fearful, both Fuller and her son soon experienced life close to the earth, the spirits and the universe, and grew well beyond their former selves. Comparisons between this book and Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under are inevitable, but Fuller's story is more personal. Drawn to a strange, mystical world, she ended up facing the earthly realities she had feared most--her grief over her first husband's death, the bad reviews of her acting and the closing of her play, as well as the impending death from AIDS of her close friend and co-star. This tale offers readers a little adventure, a little human pathos, a little magic. Foreign rights sold in China and Italy. (Sept.)