Previously published: Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2002.

What exactly is the message of Robert Rose? One year after his death, twenty-six years after just another of our crashes, knowing the effect it had on his family and friends, and thousands of others who hardly knew him, I want to go back there, I want to examine my brother's life and reanimate him...Robert Rose was a promising cricketer and footballer in the mould of his father, Bob, Collingwood's greatest player. Robert's brother, Peter, was on the way to a literary career as a poet and later a publisher. On St Valentine's Day in 1974 a terrible car accident changed the Roses forever. For the next quarter century Robert Rose lived as a quadriplegic. Rose Boys is Peter Rose's portrait of his brother. It is a heartbreaking account of a family united and ravaged by misfortune: a story of love, courage and endurance. This bestselling memoir comes with a new introduction by Brian Matthews.