Dunsborough author Stephen Twartz's own experience of inter-generational trauma inspired his novel The Veiled Thread, a tale about the ongoing emotional effects of war.
The story is a veiled reference to epigenetics, which is inherited trauma that can be passed onto children and future generations.
The Veiled Thread is a tale of a grandfather and his grandson who grapples with emotions and reactions he does not understand.
He meets his grandfather as an old man, having not had much to do with him, and starts to delve into his grandfather's background.
The story interweaves between a modern and old narrative from WWI, where the tale starts.
Mr Twartz said the story was inspired by his own grandfather who was a light horseman in the British Army in Palestine.
"My grandfather grappled with the aftermath of war for many years, so I took his story and wove it into a fictional narrative," he said.
"When I started looking at my own grandfather's failures, his life was a series of unfortunate events that I think were largely self-generated.
"There were events that did not necessarily have to happen but they did because of what happened to him during the war.
"Then I started looking at my mother, then I looked at myself and saw that these things do pass on from generation to generation.
"They are subtle things, we do not necessarily acknowledge them and they are not always overt.
"They are very pronounced as depression or anger or violence, but in me they were subtle things that were guiding me in a direction I did not want to go.
"So I started to examine it, which became the book."
Mr Twartz said the grandson in the story was an amplification of what inherited trauma does to successive generations, which could last up to five generations.
"It has resonance in people who have been to war as young men or women, when they come home and have children there is a mechanism which passes that trauma on," he said.
"It does not mutate DNA it just switches on and off genes such as depression, anger and violence, all those sorts of things.
"There have been some great studies into events which came out of WWII such as the Holocaust, and also 911 when the Twin Towers came down and the people who had children after that."
Mr Twartz has continued the theme with a second book which follows the story of a character from the first book, a stockman who went to war with his three brothers.
"Epigenetics also has parallels with the Indigenous population, Aboriginal people have gone through generations of trauma from being displaced and the violence that was visited upon them.
"The second book explores that with a focus on Australia and the effect of invasion on Aboriginal people."
Any readers who would like to find out more about Mr Twartz or would like to purchase his book can visit his website stephentwartz.com.au.
