"A Modest Quest" describes the author's quest to find out about his family's past. It was intended just to find out the basic facts about his parents' brothers and sisters, and his grandparents. Growing up, he had thought that all his grandparents had died before he was born. This was not the case, but it took some serious research and more than two years to bring the facts to light, and by then the lives of the ancestors had pulled him in. The quest was extending far beyond its initially modest aims. "You don't understand a person until you know something about their parents", and so the quest has to continue. This is probably the first of several books. The book explores the ancestors of Glenn Martin, looking back from the present to about the late 1800s. Most of this book takes place in New South Wales, with some excursions into Victoria and South Australia.