Crow Country by Kate Constable

Allen and Unwin, 2011. ISBN: 978 1 74237 395 9
Highly recommended. When I began the novel Crow Country I had no idea what to expect. However I soon learned that Crow Country is one of those rare great Australian mythological novels tying in not only with the original land owners but with the war and the Australian football culture as well. This book is one I would highly recommend to young people with an appreciation for culture.
When Sadie Hazzard and Her mother move from their Melbourne home to the town of Boort in rural Victoria she didn't expect to like it. Boort was a strange place full of even stranger people who all seemed to know her mother. Feeling lonely one day Sadie decides to find the much-talked-about second lake of Boort. But what she finds there is enough to turn anyone's head.
The Mortlocks and the Hazzards have lived in Boort ever since anyone can remember. They grew up together, worked together and even went to war together. Clancy Hazzard knows this and he full appreciated the position Mr. Mortlock puts him in coming into his home with blood on his hands.
The story must be told, what was lost must be found and what is sacred must be protected by those who know. Sadie teams up with her friend Walter, an aboriginal boy, to try and solve this mysterious puzzle all the while being watched by one particularly auspicious crow.
Crow Country is a very engaging book made even more so with the links to aboriginal mythologies and WWII. Kate Constable has previously been labelled as 'the time-slip queen' and I can see how she earns her title. This compelling book recreates voices of the past in a superb manner and it seems a shame that the book had to reach an end. I am looking forward to reading more of Kate Constable's novels.
Kayla Gaskell (Student, 16)