“Ernst thought about what he had seen of the blacks and also about what he’d read. He didn’t think they sere stupid at all. They seemed to Ernst to understand much more about how the land worked, and this terrified him. His father’s fields were one way to demonstrate knowledge but they had another. Whenever they returned to the forest they moved like water down a stream over rocks, fluid and easy, bending to slip between the cracks. His father was not like that. His father was an axe.”

The Death of John Lacey is the third novel by Australian teacher and author, Ben Hobson. In 1847, ten-year-old Ernst Montague is living with his parents on a small holding near Bannockburn in rural Victoria. His father Edwin was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for theft, and now grows potatoes and corn, and raises sheep. His mother Isabelle would much rather be back in her beloved Scotland.

Isabelle fears every encounter with the blacks, and hates that Edwin is so indulgent with them. Every encounter that Ernst has had with them has been benign, friendly, even. Then, in the aftermath of a musket accident, he learns something shocking about his father.

Six years on, Ernst, his younger brother Joseph and their father are panning for gold near Ballarat when John Lacey and his brother Graham enter the tent city. While the Lacey brothers reveal that they intend to build and run a storehouse, stocking and selling much-needed supplies to gold prospectors, it’s quickly clear that John’s lust for gold has not yet been satisfied, and he will do whatever he deems necessary to find more.

In 1870, some three weeks after preacher Gilbert Delaney and his young family arrive in Lacey, there’s a fire, and when Gilbert goes to help, he discovers an injured fugitive. He’s already aware that John Lacey runs his town with an iron hand; his discovery presents him with a dilemma he would rather not face.

Three narratives carry the story: John Lacey, Ernst Montague and Gilbert Delaney offer three very different perspectives of the events that lead up to the dramatic confrontation between them. There is a slow build to a tense stand-off and an inevitably tragic, violent climax.

John Lacey will quickly strike the reader as arrogant, antagonistic and self-serving; a man bent on gaining and holding power over others; his only redeeming quality is that he wants his brother Gray to be happy. As an innocent and sincere ten-year-old, Ernst Montague immediately endears himself to the reader; at thirty-three, he’s driven to desperate acts to try to save his brother. Gilbert Delaney spends much of the novel paralysed by indecision as he wrestles with his conscience.

Hobson conveys his era and setting with consummate ease: the rawness of the landscape, the primitive conditions, the prevailing white settler mindset of possession and ownership, about which his indigenous characters endeavour to convey their attitude to the land and its creatures. The reader is treated to some gorgeous prose: “His words sounded like music when he spoke, like in him was some permanent song. He had a deep voice” is one example.
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Hobson has chosen to omit quote marks for speech, which is likely to irritate readers; his writing style is spare, perhaps a little too spare when it comes to long tracts of dialogue, where that creates some confusion. Scant detail leaves the reader to surmise some of what occurs between the time intervals described. This is a powerful dose of Australian historical fiction
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.