Beauty shines in dark story

All Our Shimmering Skies By Trent Dalton, HarperCollins $34.99

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Dig Molly dig, run Molly run. That’s the continuous loop mantra playing throughout this stunning work from Aussie journalist and award winning novelist Trent Dalton.

Molly Hook is the child and niece of Northern Territory gravediggers/grave robbers. They exploit her mercilessly, setting her to work in her mother’s grave.

In Darwin’s 1942 bombing Molly’s father is blown to bits. With Greta, the actress lover her uncle brutalises, Molly runs for her life. The stone heart she believes is her mother’s gift from the skies is her ever present talisman.

Her ultimate quest is to find Longcoat Bob, the indigenous witch doctor she blames for the curse of retribution that’s wrecked her family. Molly and Greta stumble on Yukio, a Japanese pilot whose seeming intention was to commit hara-kiri to atone for the loss of his wife.

With such a dark background and diversity of complex characters this is a compelling story because Dalton is a writer in the purest sense of the word. Under his descriptive powers the rugged outback becomes a place of superb beauty, the skies above it shimmer gloriously.

An astonishing work that’s a privilege to read and reread. —