All Our Shimmering Skies

In a harsh and magical novel set in Darwin, Australia, at the start of World War II, Molly, a gravedigger’s daughter, has inherited her mother’s dreamy disposition. Her mother died when Molly was seven, leaving her to fend for herself in a 20th-century Dickensian environment, cared for by her brutal, heavily drinking father Horace, and often her equally drunken and brutal uncle Aubrey. The family is also reputed to have been cursed by Longcoat Bob, an Aboriginal shaman whose gold was possibly stolen by her prospector grandfather. Molly’s only escapes are her imagination and the poetry books in her late mother’s library. After the Japanese bomb Darwin, killing Horace, Molly sets off to find Longcoat Bob to ask him to remove the alleged curse. She’s joined by Greta, a German actress and sometimes exotic dancer, and eventually by Yukio, a gentle-spirited Japanese pilot who crashes his plane rather than continue to kill. As they venture ever deeper into the outback, their journey takes on mythic proportions.