All of the people that the young Eli loves are flawed: his mother and stepfather are drug addicts; his father abandoned him and his mute brother August when they were young, and his babysitter is a notorious ex con. However, he refuses to play the victim, and it’s love that drives him to break into the Boggo Road jail to visit his mother on Xmas day, and to effect the ultimate miracle of bringing his family together again.
Trent Dalton is such a fine writer that these scenarios are entirely credible, and we the readers are amazed and delighted that such happiness has resulted from Eli’s childhood of brutality and neglect. Even August begins to speak again.
Truly, this is a novel bursting with exuberance and vitality, all the more astonishing, considering it was based on the author’s own life.
Helen Scheller