Donna M Cameron’s latest book, The Rewilding, is a passport pre-stamped with several visas: one to the contours of an unconventional love story; another to the land of Dystopia at the end of an Outback trail; a third to father-son estrangement; and a fourth to the fragmented underworld of radical eco-politics.
Over it all hangs a sense of menace, fuelled by a continent-wide chase and only occasionally relieved by the catharsis of face-to-face confrontation.
Introducing Jagger Eckerman, 27, Porsche-driving son of a Sydney property developer, whose aimless life has reached the point where he feels the only way to purify his soul is to blow the gaff on his corrupt father – and skedaddle.
His first hideout, on heathland high above the Pacific, is a cave pre-occupied by Mia Noretti, a young, dishevelled and ultra-suspicious woman hellbent on rescuing Planet Earth from its climate crisis. At first encounter, each regards the other as a threat. The ways in which that initial repulsion turns to attraction supply a beguiling subplot.
You need to strap yourself in for one of the most unusual road trips in contemporary Australian writing. Dramatic plot twists are in store, from a cyclone that flattens the Gold Coast to the clandestine activities of a splinter faction that’s broken away from Earth Rebellion.
Every chapter takes our two heroes further away from civilisation, and civilised conduct, until at a protest camp in FNQ we witness an eruption of violence that is like going from Trent Dalton’s Lola in the Mirror straight to Wolf Creek.
Every hero needs a nemesis, and Jagger receives a double dose in the form of Vincent – a goon hired as a hit man by his father years ago – and his tongue-studded loutish son Ivan.
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Yet Cameron’s work is anything but one-dimensional. The heaviness of her themes is lightened by a personal mix of favourite music throughout the text – from The Doors and The Rolling Stones to ELO and Natalie Merchant.
Cameron proves adept at maintaining reader interest through frequent changes of scene. With the family and friends of her main characters darting in and out of the narrative, though, keeping track of who’s who is difficult at times. A list of characters would have been a valuable aid.
What the author has produced here is a page-turner: if it takes you more than three days from go to whoa, you must be leading quite a hectic life. But at least you can rest assured they’ll have been three days memorably spent.
The Rewilding by Donna M Cameron, Transit Lounge, $32.99. Cameron will be in conversation with Sally Piper at Avid Reader, West End, on March 15, 6.30pm-7.30pm, free event but booking essential at avidreader.com.au
Ken Haley is a reviewer, editor and author, two of whose books – Emails From the Edge and The One That Got Away – have been published by Transit Lounge.
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