Robbie Arnott is a Tasmanian author, and I can recommend this book, and his previously published work Limberlost to you.
Dusk is set in the late 18th century, in the very early days of first settlement in Tasmania. The main protagonists are twins Iris and Floyd, and they are the offspring of a couple of love-struck convicts who have chosen to lead a dangerous life on the run.
The reader meets the twins in their adulthood, where they are living a precarious life of hardship and near starvation. The pair are down in the lowlands when they hear about a bounty being offered for the capture of a puma, which is running amok in the Tasmanian highlands, killing sheep and shepherds alike. The local settlers have put up a hefty bounty to be rid of the menace, but most attempts have been unsuccessful and have resulted in the death of each bounty hunter.
Historically, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of pumas being introduced into Tasmania but the premise in this book is that they’ve been brought in to deal with other predators of the sheep. Naturally enough, this ill-considered plan fails because pumas like to eat sheep too!
Iris and Floyd are attached at the hip, essentially because of Floyd’s past injuries, which have left him with a lifetime of pain. They are uncertain as to whether they are going to proceed with the search for the puma on account of the danger but, when Iris meets a man called Patrick Lees, their fates are sealed on the journey that they will undertake.
This story is very different to Arnott’s Limberlost. I look forward to reading what Arnott comes up with next – an emerging author worth watching.
He is a two-time winner of The Age Book of the Year, and at the time of writing, Dusk was a co-winner of the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize along with Tasma Walton’s I Am Nannertgarrook.
Presented by the Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) at a ceremony at The Sydney Mint in October, the awards recognise
“the outstanding literary talents of novelists who illuminate stories of the past, providing a window into our present and the future”.
Angelo Loukakis, chair of the adult judging panel, said, “Robbie Arnott boldly builds on the historical fact of white Australia’s destructive exploitation of the land and lifeforms in an earlier time – to imagine and present us with a skilfully narrated, symbolic as well as grounded tale of the role of personal ambition and private gain in this continent’s fate.”
He writes in a solid lyrical manner which is a joy to read. His novels are not action-packed thrillers, but the stories never fail to attract your attention.
4.2 stars on Good Reads