In the opening pages of Jewels and Ashes a man of eighty stands on a chair, his arms outstretched, describing the tree he remembers from his childhood. How beautiful and tall and wide it was, as it stood in the forest called Zwierziniec, on the outskirts of Bialystok, Poland. How strong his family was, how it branched and grew and prospered, in those years before 1939!

Arnold Zable is the transplant, the sapling that grew from a seed, cast aside, driven to the other end of the earth. Part of him was in a place that was distant from the streets of Carlton where he grew up, went to the football, taught school, lived an Aussie life. Zable needed to find some roots.