AustLit

'In 1986, the year the Tasmanian tiger is officially declared extinct, fourteen-year-old Samson and his twin brother Jonah travel from the Sunshine Coast to the wild back country of west Tasmania to live on a mountain with a granddad they've never met. Clancy is a beat-up old man who breaks brumbies, hunts tigers, and has spent four years hunting for his missing daughter, River. The resentful, brooding Jonah, and sunny-tempered Samson, who has Down syndrome, feel very lost. The mountain isn't their home but they become entranced, in different ways, with their surroundings. While Samson finds delight all around, Jonah develops a dark obsession that ties in with Clancy's desire to bring River home. There's something out there in the bush, something that seems set on tearing this family to pieces. Sing Fox to Me is a story built from lost and stolen children, Tasmanian tigers, missing animals, Down syndrome and parents who run away. It is the symphony of three howling male voices, each hoping to find the right pack and live comfortably in their own skin.' (Publication summary)

Examines the representation of Down Syndrome in fiction, through the American novels The Memory Keeper's Daughter and Jewel, and through reflection on the author's own novel, Sing Fox to Me.

'This project investigates the current borders around and within, what I have in this exegesis termed, "the Down Syndrome novel", using a close reading analysis of literary texts containing characters with Down syndrome and contextualised by theoretical works drawn from both disability and literary theory. This practice-led thesis introduces and discusses select fictional characters with Down syndrome from numerous genres, revealing them as highly contained, or "boundaried", spoken for, and generally used for narrative conflict rather than included as individuals with agency and a legitimate, autonomous voice and narrative point of view. In reframing the Australian landscape as "disabled" this exegesis illustrates that the Australian Gothic novel can shift, and sometimes even remove, the boundary around characters with intellectual disabilities, allowing a space where the stories of characters with Down syndrome can emerge.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.