Saltwater Boy by Bradley Christmas

Title:  Saltwater Boy

Author: Bradley Christmas

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 8^th March 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 400

Price: $21.99

Synopsis: Heartfelt and poignant, this coming of age story explores father-son relationships, against a backdrop of small town rivalries, buried truths, with themes of sustainability, preserving the past and environmental care.

When Dad goes to jail, Matthew and his mum move to the coast, so mum – an artist – thinks she can renovate her late father’s old place to sell it to get them back on their feet. Matthew strikes up a friendship with Old Bill, an Indigenous man who becomes a father figure to him, and teaches him how to find and eat pipis, fish (and to make a few dollars from it). Dad gets out on parole and moves back in with the family, but his anger fractures the newfound peace, and everything is once again at stake, and in peril.

When Matthew’s dad gets in trouble, he makes trouble for everyone else too. But with Dad in jail, Matthew and his mum have a chance to put the pieces back together. Mum makes plans for a summer down the coast, fixing up Grandpa’s old place in an effort to make ends meet. The beach, the swirling rockpools and the vast ocean offer new perspective and promise. Matthew strikes up a friendship with Bill, an old local who recognises a fellow ‘Saltwater Boy’, and shows him how to find pipis and catch fish, and even make a few dollars from it. Bill becomes the paternal figure that Dad isn’t – wise and patient – but Bill isn’t welcomed in town, and Matthew begins to witness old rivalries, and buried secrets, resurface.

Then Dad gets out on parole, threatening the new life Matthew and Mum have built for themselves, forcing a confrontation with the past … and the truth.

~*~

In 1992, twelve-year-old Matthew is at the end of primary school when he and his mother are evicted from their Sydney home and have to head down the coast to his Grandpa’s old house in Crawley’s Point. Matthew is adrift, separated from his best friend Asha in Sydney, and worried about what will happen to them. While he is exploring the beach, Matthew meets an Indigenous man called Old Bill – a man who lives on the edges of society, with a deep, dark secret – the reason he doesn’t come into town, and why he asks Matthew to help him sell the fish that they catch in the club where Matthew’s mother works. For a few weeks, things seem to be okay – Matthew is curious about Old Bill’s past but looks to him for the fatherly advice he needs. That is, until his father comes back and inserts himself into the community, and starts getting to know the people who have become part of Matthew and Mum’s lives – and as a result, starts changing the way they do things, ensuring that it is his way or the highway, and reverting to his old ways that saw him end up in jail. But when Matthew’s dad gets a wild idea in his head that puts him and Matthew in danger, everything will change for Crawley’s Point and the people living there, and the secrets that have ensured people hold onto bitter grudges forever will come to light. Matthew also hates leaving his best friend Asha behind in Sydney, but he has no choice.

Saltwater Boy is a family story about the connections between fathers and sons, land and people, and the way the community comes together but also fractures when tragedy strikes and what type of tragedy, what type of person influences how people react. The backdrop to the novel is 1992, and the Land Rights movement with Eddie Mabo, so Matthew and Old Bill discuss this at one stage and what it means, and how people were interpreting it. This is done with nuance, so that questions can be asked and answered – which worked well, as Matthew is allowed to investigate things and not understand anything, to think about things and come to his own conclusions about things – including how he feels about his father. As a result, the novel is focused on the father-son dynamic, and how a volatile personality can affect how others respond to you, and what it means when you break the rules. This novel shows that there are always consequences and ways of turning your life around, particularly when you discover something about yourself, your past, your family, or the people around you that changes things forever.

Old Bill calls Matthew a ‘Saltwater Boy’ – someone with an affinity with saltwater and sets about teaching him special lessons. In this way, to me, it had echoes of Storm Boy or Blueback – but with more depth, more to the story. Like an expansion on the themes in a new way with new characters, so I think it would sit well with these books, and the three could be read together – because to me it felt like each one offered a unique story about the experience of living in a small coastal town, and the interactions with the land and the people connected to it. In Saltwater Boy, there are more layers to the story with Matthew’s father’s history, with the past of Crawley’s Point and the navigation of the Mabo and Land Rights discussion that show the impact of colonialism and how everyone in Crawley’s Point is part of the town in this story, and part of each other – even if the way they are connected isn’t what they really want.

One thing that I liked about this book was the way the secret was constantly hinted at, and the way it came to light exactly when it needed to, and in the way it needed to. This allowed for the rest of the rising conflicts to flare up, which was needed to drive the novel, to allow characters to explore what they were going through so things could resolve realistically. It is also a novel about change and being on the precipice of change – Matthew and Asha are about to start high school, but Asha is fighting with the expectations of her adoptive parents and a secret she’s kept for so long. Secrets it seems are everywhere in this novel, and I think this is where the power is, because it allows for everyone to have secrets that need to come out – but it is also about how and when they reveal them that makes the novel powerful and I think this will be a book that young adult readers will enjoy, as even though it is set in 1992, it examines the universal themes of family, identity, and growing up that we all go through during our lives, and as a reader, it is these universal themes that make a book special for me, that allow readers to find something to identify with or understand even if there are many other differences that will be specific to other people. It means that these books can be for everyone, which to me is the most important thing about a book – that it can be for anyone when they need it the most.