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Award-winning author Darren Groth's epic story of a dog who will protect the last remaining member of his family, an intellectually disabled boy, at all costs as human civilization crumbles around them.In a time of isolation and scarcity, a regressive regime rules with absolute power, turning neighbour against neighbour and crushing dissidence with deadly force. A microcosm of this monstrous time: the tiny Pacific Northwest town of Gilder.
In a house on the fringes of the decimated hamlet, Tao-a failed service dog turned pet-wakes to find his leash tied to the stairs, his hind leg broken and his family killed. With the world he knows shattered, there is one course of action: lay with his slain masters and wait for the enemy-the "hounds"-to return and end his life.
But it is not the hounds that find him-it is Kasper, fifteen years old, disabled, limited ability to speak, sole survivor of the family. With the discovery of
Boy, Tao understands he now has a duty: guide the last living member of his pack through the ravaged streets of Gilder to safety. The destination? The only refuge he can conceive in a world gone mad? The site of his training five years before.
Boy in the Blue Hammock is an epic tale of loss and loyalty, of dissent and destruction, of assumption and ableism. With a powerful narrative and evocative prose, the novel poses one of the important questions of our time: When evil silences the people, who will protect those without a voice?
About the author
Darren Groth is the author of seven novels including
Kindling (Hachette Australia, 2010),
Are You Seeing Me? (Orca, 2017),
Munro vs. the Coyote (Orca, 2017) and
Infinite Blue (Orca, 2018). He won the 2016 Adelaide Festival Award for Young Adult Literature and has been nominated for numerous other prestigious prizes, among them the Governor General's Literary Awards, the BC Book Prizes, the OLA White Pine Award, the CBCA Book of the Year (Australia), and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards (Australia). Groth is a passionate advocate for the representation of neurodiversity and intellectual disability in literature, and is the proud father of a son with autistic spectrum disorder. When he's not watching
American Ninja Warrior with his beautiful wife, he's eating Fatburger with his wondrous twins. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
