'A powerfully told, gripping novel of family, guilt, empire, and race set in the dusty, deserted outback of Queensland in the 1880s. Tommy McBride and his brother Billy return to the isolated family home to find their parents have been brutally murdered. Haunted and alone, their desperate search for the killers leads them to the charismatic and deadly Inspector Noone and his Queensland Native Police - an infamous arm of colonial power whose sole purpose is the 'dispersal' of Indigenous Australians in protection of settler rights.
'The retribution that follows will not only devastate Tommy and his relationship with his brother, but leave a terrible and lasting mark on the colony and the country it later becomes.
'This is a stunning debut from a major new talent.' (Publication summary)
A brief review of this work appeared in The New York Times 9 December 2018
Dust Off the Bones
London
:
Pushkin Press
,
2021
22116453
2021
single work
novel
historical fiction
crime
'The author of the acclaimed Only Killers and Thieves returns to turn-of-the-century Australia in this powerful sequel that follows the story of brothers Tommy and Billy McBride, the widow of their family’s killer, Katherine Sullivan, and the sadistic Native Police officer Edmund Noone
'In 1890, estranged brothers Tommy and Billy McBride are living far apart in Queensland, each dealing with the trauma that destroyed their family in different ways. Now 21, Billy bottles his guilt and justifies his past crimes while attempting to revive his father’s former cattle run and navigate his feelings for the young widow Katherine Sullivan. Katherine, meanwhile, cherishes her newfound independence but is struggling to establish herself as head of the vast Broken Ridge cattle empire her corrupt late husband mercilessly built.
'But even in the outback, the past cannot stay buried forever. When a judicial inquest is ordered into the McBride family murders and the subsequent reprisal slaughter of the Kurrong people, both Billy and Police Inspector Edmund Noone – the man who led the massacre – are called to testify. The inquest forces Billy to relive events he has long refused to face. He desperately needs to find his brother, Tommy, who for years has been surviving in the wilderness, attempting to move on with his life. But Billy is not the only one looking for Tommy. Now the ruthless Noone is determined to find the young man as well, and silence both brothers for good.
'An enthralling, propulsive adventure that builds in suspense, told in gorgeous prose and steeped in history and atmosphere, Dust Off the Bones raises timeless issues of injustice, honor, morality, systemic racism, and the abuse of power. With an unflinching eye, Paul Howarth examines the legacy of violence and the brutal realities of life in a world remarkably familiar to our own.' (Publication summary)
'This article proposes the idea of the “colonial compulsion”, or an impulse for completion, neatness, and order, and argues that this urge is a motor that drives much literature that focuses on crime and cartography. Through readings of Brian Friel’s play Translations (1980) and Paul Haworth’s novel Only Killers and Thieves (2018), I make the case that crime narratives and depictions of mapping share the same root, that we read and enjoy crime stories for the same reason we find maps satisfying: because we wish to “solve” the crime in the same way we wish to see the “blank spaces” of the map inked in. “An act of geographical violence” holds that the type of contemporary literature which ties together cartography, crime, and colonialism urges the reader to think through and against colonial and modern-day systems of oppression. Ultimately, this article puts forth a sustained case for performing readings that deliberately intertwine the subjects of crime, cartography, and colonialism and for seriously examining the framework of the colonial compulsion.' (Publication abstract)
'It’s 1885 and Tommy McBride and his big brother Billy live with their parents on a hardscrabble cattle ranch in Central Queensland: “Two boys, not quite men, tiny in a landscape withered by drought.” The ranch is failing, and the boys blame Dad – worn down with bad luck and drink, especially compared with Sullivan, the more prosperous squatter-baron up the road.' (Introduction)
'It’s 1885 and Tommy McBride and his big brother Billy live with their parents on a hardscrabble cattle ranch in Central Queensland: “Two boys, not quite men, tiny in a landscape withered by drought.” The ranch is failing, and the boys blame Dad – worn down with bad luck and drink, especially compared with Sullivan, the more prosperous squatter-baron up the road.' (Introduction)
'This article proposes the idea of the “colonial compulsion”, or an impulse for completion, neatness, and order, and argues that this urge is a motor that drives much literature that focuses on crime and cartography. Through readings of Brian Friel’s play Translations (1980) and Paul Haworth’s novel Only Killers and Thieves (2018), I make the case that crime narratives and depictions of mapping share the same root, that we read and enjoy crime stories for the same reason we find maps satisfying: because we wish to “solve” the crime in the same way we wish to see the “blank spaces” of the map inked in. “An act of geographical violence” holds that the type of contemporary literature which ties together cartography, crime, and colonialism urges the reader to think through and against colonial and modern-day systems of oppression. Ultimately, this article puts forth a sustained case for performing readings that deliberately intertwine the subjects of crime, cartography, and colonialism and for seriously examining the framework of the colonial compulsion.' (Publication abstract)
