To Name Those Lost
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Summer 1874, and Launceston teeters on the brink of anarchy. After abandoning his wife and child many years ago, the Black War veteran Thomas Toosey must return to the city to search for William, his now motherless twelve-year-old son. He travels through the island's northern districts during a time of impossible hardship - hardship that has left its mark on him too. Arriving in Launceston, however, Toosey discovers a town in chaos. He is desperate to find his son amid the looting and destruction, but at every turn he is confronted by the Irish transportee Fitheal Flynn and his companion, the hooded man, to whom Toosey owes a debt that he must repay.
To Name Those Lost is the story of a father's journey. Wilson has an eye for the dirt, the hardness, the sheer dog-eat-doggedness of the lives of the poor. Human nature is revealed in all its horror and beauty as Thomas Toosey struggles with the good and the vile in himself and learns what he holds important.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wilson's (The Roving Party) second novel is as violent, bleak, and absorbing as his highly-praised first. Again the setting is Tasmania, this time taking place in 1874. The efficient plot could be described as the tale of two seekers, dogged and inimical, squaring off. Thomas Toosey, an ex-convict said to be "on winking terms with the devil," is looking for his son, whose deceased mother he abandoned, to start a new life together. The Irishman Fitheal Flynn, "mad as a sack of rabbits," is looking for Toosey, who stole a considerable amount of money from him, and committing a more heinous act in the process. As Toosey gets closer to finding his son, Flynn gets closer to catching up with Toosey. They all converge in the chaotic, rough-and-tumble town of Launceston, whose inhabitants are rioting in protest of a new railway tax. Wilson has a fine ear for dialogue and nicely sketches main and supporting characters alike, except in the case of a lamentably cartoonish Chinese innkeeper. The brisk tale doesn't wade too deeply into the historical weeds, rather proceeding steadily to its final confrontations, inevitable but dramatic, savage but not gratuitous. This is a satisfying, grimy adventure about a reciprocal violence that pollutes.
