Roo Glover has two highly desirable talents - he can fight, and he can run like the clappers. In the inner city's harsh code there are losers and survivors, and Roo's a survivor. He's made it through adoption, through juvenile detention, through poverty. He's an athlete in training, aching towards the dream of Olympic qualification. He's even coping with being white in the turbulent Aboriginal family of his girlfriend. But when cousin Stanley dies in custody, and Roo finds his father the same week, trouble starts to catch up with him. 'Melissa Lucashenko demonstrates a powerful ear for an Australian idiom largely absent from contemporary Australian literature.' 1998 Dobbie Award 'Lucashenko can tackle the hard stuff in a way that makes you feel glad to be alive.

' Jenny Pausacker.