The bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton returns with All Our Shimmering Skies – a glorious novel destined to become another Australian classic.
Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, is looking to the skies and running for her life.
Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart, alongside a map to lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who she believes put a curse on her family.
By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot.
The treasure lies before them, but close behind them trails the dark. And above them, always, are the shimmering skies.
A story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves, All Our Shimmering Skies is an odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies.
It is a love letter to Australia and an ode to the art of looking up – a buoyant, beautiful and magical novel, abrim with warmth, wit and wonder.
Trent Dalton writes for the award-winning The Weekend Australian. A former assistant editor of The Courier-Mail, he has won a Walkley, been a four-time winner of the national News Awards Feature Journalist of the Year Award, and was named Queensland Journalist of the Year at the 2011 Clarion Awards for excellence in Queensland media. His writing includes several short and feature-length film screenplays.
His latest feature film screenplay, Home, is a love story inspired by his non-fiction collection Detours: Stories from the Street (2011), the culmination of three months immersed in Brisbane’s homeless community, the proceeds of which went back to the 20 people featured within its pages. His journalism has twice been nominated for a United Nations of Australia Media Peace Award, and his debut novel Boy Swallows Universe was published in 2018.
He was nominated for a 2010 AFI Best Short Fiction screenplay award for his film, Glenn Owen Dodds, starring David Wenham. The film won the prestigious International Prix Canal award at the world’s largest short film festival, The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France. Dalton’s debut feature film screenplay, In the Silence, is currently in production. Trent also hosted the ABC Conversations show while Richard Fidler was on a Churchill Fellowship.
All Our Shimmering Skies is published by HarperCollins Publishers and available from all good book retailers including Booktopia.
Image: All Our Shimmering Skies – courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers