Paydirt

I feel myself slipping into Amnesia. All the stories of my life slipping away. I am his guardian. I cannot leave my post. Sometimes I think if they just took Warren away I’d forget about him in a week…Every voice is saying, ‘Give it away, girlie! After all these years, after all you know about him, don’t let them do it to him!’ So run the troubled thoughts of Kate, the white foster mother, as she and her Torrres Strait Islander foster son Warren fly to Brisbane to meet his dying mother Flo. Warren hasn’t seen his birth mother since he was a toddler, taken away by the authorities ‘for his own good’. What should Kate tell Flo about her son’s long history of bureaucratic abuse and heartless disregard? And how can she begin to imagine the pain of Flo and her people? Based on Kathleen Mary Fallon’s script for the film Call Me Mum, Paydirt presents four provocative monologues highlighting the complex dramas of race politics beneath the complacent facade of contemporary Australia. This is a confronting, at times funny and ultimately deeply affirming novel…emotion, thought and literary form all tussling together and triumphing. - Ross Gibson, author of Seven Versions of an Australian Badland Kathleen Mary Fallon is amongst the most talented writers in Australia. - Adrian Martin, The Monthly