Catching Teller Crow

by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Ezekiel Kwaymullina

** The book the Guardian has called a: 'taut, intricate thriller [...] deeply poignant and original'

*Winner of the Victorian Premier YA Prize for Literature, and Best Young Adult Novel at the Aurealis Awards - two of Australia's most prestigious writing awards*

An extraordinary thriller, told from the perspective of two Aboriginal protagonists, which weaves together themes of grief, colonial history, violence, love and family.

Nothing's been the same for Beth Teller since she died.

Her dad, a detective, is the only one who can see and hear her, and he's drowning in grief. Only a suspected murder, and a mystery to solve, might save them both.

And they have a potential witness: Isobel Catching. Aboriginal by birth, like Beth, she seems lost and isolated in the world.

But as the two get closer, Isobel's strange tale of glass-eyed monsters and stolen colours will intertwine with Beth's investigation - and reveal something dark and terrible at the heart of this Australian town . . .

• ISBN10: 0241380073
• ISBN13: 9780241380079
• Publish Date: 2 May 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 208
• Language: English

Reviews

[helenfarch]

“And Dad took that personally. He pretty much took all injustice personally, but especially anything to do with Aboriginal people not being treated right. And as he’d told me a thousand times over, growing up in his father’s town had taught him that one person in power could do bad things, but it looks lots of people to let those bad things continue.”

Beth Teller’s dad is a detective. But he hasn’t been himself since Beth died in a tragic car accident. Beth’s mother died when she was young, so she is all her dad has left, so she just can’t leave him yet.

To ease him back into work, Beth’s dad is sent to investigate a fire in a remote country town.

A town just like he had grown up in. A fire had burnt down a home for troubled youth. It seems like an easy case, until a body is found, and then more people are mysteriously murdered. There is one witness to the fire - Isobel Catching. Beth and her father visit her in the hospital - but things just get more mysterious when it become obvious that Catching can also see Beth’s ghost.

Catching tells them the haunting story of her family, of the stolen generations, and of how she came to be wandering alone near where the fire happened.

As Beth tried to unravel the mystery of what is happening in this small town, as she tries to help her father through his grief and encourages him to re-connect with her mother’s family, the truth starts to be revealed about who Catching really is, the brutal history of this small town and how love and friendship continues “beyond one life and into another.”

This is a small town mystery, a ghost story, an exploration into the history of Australia’s treatment of the Indigenous people of this ancient land.
Something for everyone!