The story of an Aboriginal youth, a "bodgie" of the early sixties, who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to jail, and comes out to do battle once more with the society that put him there.
Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aborigine in modern Australian society with memorable insight and stylishness.
