We Didn’t Think It Through

Judges' comments

Removed from his parents as a young child, Jamie has grown up in small-town NSW with his aunt and uncle, resentful of his parents’ apparent abandonment, heartsick at the low expectations his town has of young Aboriginal men, and frustrated with his own inertia. When Jamie and his mates make a rash decision one night, it’s as though he’s fallen into the town’s self-fulfilling prophecy. Will the love of his family and the promise of reconnection be enough to help him out the other side? Will the stories that have started to spill out of him allow him for once to be the protagonist?

With direct prose, and poetry drawn directly from the main character’s soul, Gary Lonesborough draws the reader into the raw and heartfelt experience of a young man struggling against the multiple biases stacked against him. It is a privilege to be taken so intimately inside his story, and guided through the urgent and timely themes with the author’s sure hand and lightness of touch.