Causing a storm of controversy on first publication, Children of Blindness, a powerful drama set in the small, fictional, but archetypal outback country town of Woongarra, depicts with stunning force, the violent interaction of a small group of people; black and white, over a period of little more than a week, in which three of them die.
Based on actual events at the time, this searing novel opens with Dougo Foster returning from six months in prison to find his children taken into care because of gross neglect by his drunken, pregnant wife, Flo. Dougo's furious, spontaneous attack leaves Flo hospitalised and the baby in danger. His efforts to regain his children from indigenous guardian George Davies' communal home are the central thread along which the story unfolds.
Dougo's angry brother, Allan, runs the Aboriginal Legal Service, and is involved with Lesley, a white schoolteacher, who as an outsider, is horrified by conditions in the town. Allan's offsider Pete Mathews sees his boss as going soft on whitefellows as a result of his friendship with Lesley. But he has taken advantage of Dougo's prison term to fornicate with his wife, Flo.
Harry Fletcher runs the segregated pub and doesn't care who buys the booze or the effect it has; even an alcohol-fuelled, violent gang-bang in the back yard. Then there's Fred Pepper, the sly grog merchant who sells illegal alcohol and deadly methylated spirits to the Aboriginal community.
And Jim Dargan, a fourth-generation white landowner who savagely attacks Allan Foster, unaware that they share a common great-grandfather.
Grappling with all this are a compassionate cop, Constable Ed Vickers who finds he can't stomach the daily mayhem and his colleague, red-neck Sergeant Ron Evans who, hardened by experience, regards all Aborigine as hopeless, bloody boongs.
But there is little even they can do when a series of events combine to tip the teetering township over the edge, into a night of unremitting horror.