That Deadman Dance

by Kim Scott

Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.
The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.
But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...

(From Publisher).

Kim Scott grew up on the South Coast of Western Australia. As a descendant of those who first created human society along that edge of ocean, he is proud to be one among those who call themselves Noongar. He began writing for publication when he became a teacher of English and has had poetry and short stories published in a number of anthologies. His second novel, 'Benang: From the Heart', won the 1999 WA Premier's Book Award, the 2000 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2001 Kate Challis RAKA Award. Kim lives in Coolbellup, Western Australia, and is currently employed at the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University.

Kim Scott's poetic, imaginative re-working of the encounter between the Noongar people of Western Australia and the English settlers, allows us to see the heart-breaking reality of colonization against the imaginative possibilities of what might have been.

Nominated by staff from our statewide network of libraries. This novel is of high literary merit and has won The Commonwealth Writer's Prize for best book in South-East Asia and the Pacific.

Set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia, this book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal people and the first European settlers, and provides a fascinating and powerful portrait of Australia's earliest years. Winner, Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize; shortlisted for Miles Franklin award.