ALA Booklist (Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2005)

Satchel's world seems defined by suffering: his construction job is ending; his father's religious delusions preclude his earning a living; his mother's work aggravates her painful skin condition; and their town is withering economically. After Satchel's best friend, Leroy, moves away, his only companions are his dog and Leroy's sister, 21-year-old Chelsea. An emotionally crushed misfit, Chelsea believes that the wolflike animal Satchel has seen on a nearby mountain is a thylacine, an extinct Tasmanian marsupial. Tempted to exploit the thylacine's presence to help his town, his friend, and himself, Satchel finds the animal again and makes his decision. Given Satchel's emotionally grinding situation, the pivotal scene, involving an injury to his dog, seems almost too much to bear. Hartnett, an award-winning Australian novelist, keeps Satchel at the forefront of the story, but in the background lurks a parallel sort of miracle: the animal that was hunted to extinction somehow survives. The story is uncompromisingly stark, but readers will find Satchel a sympathetic figure who willingly remains in a situation that limits his prospects even as he grows beyond its confines.

Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005)

Stark images of a decaying rural Australian town intertwine with an intriguing environmental mystery sparked when Satchel, a young man at once trapped by and stubbornly loyal to his boyhood home, glimpses what might be a supposedly extinct Tasmanian tiger. Distinctive supporting characters, such as Satchel's mentally ill, fanatically religious father, add to the engrossing drama.

Kirkus Reviews

Satchel O'Rye, 23 and going nowhere fast, lives with his parents in a dying Australian town. His father suffers from a mental illness that has convinced him that "God will provide" and has consequently sworn off all paid work; his mother, a nurse, has returned to work to provide for the family, but her job—crushing pills for geriatric patients—has reduced her hands to cracked, swollen shreds. Into this bleak landscape drifts a strange creature, doglike but not a dog—possibly a Tasmanian wolf, thought to have become extinct in 1936 and, if Satchel could capture it, might end his community's inevitable decline. Hartnett has crafted a characteristically minimalist narrative that sets up a contrapuntal relationship between Satchel, whose determination not to abandon his mother has caused him to reject opportunity after opportunity, and the animal, whose very survival rests on the fact that the world has forgotten it. It's a quiet, complex work, whose themes of sacrifice and redemption work their way throughout; if some characters are little more than symbols, readers will nevertheless find it a memorable, haunting experience. (Fiction. YA)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Living in a bypassed Australian town with people "sunk by the dislocation" wrought by a new highway, hardworking 23-year-old Satchel O'Rye is coping as well as he can with his overshadowing mother, Laura, a nurse, and his fanatically religious father, William. Years earlier William suddenly stopped running the local gas station and began creating religious miniature watercolors, becoming increasingly odd and threatening. Laura's longsuffering nature simply serves to "[draw] the bars around [Satchel] tighter." Even his long-time friend, Leroy, finds work out of town, leaving Satchel with Leroy's outcast sister, Chelsea, and his own beloved dog, Moke, as his only companions. In a rather forced subplot, Satchel spies a strange animal in the mountains, and Chelsea speculates that it is a presumed extinct Tasmanian tiger. The day Satchel accidentally hits Moke with his car and then fights back against his father's rages, he again spots the animal and becomes determined to begin his own journey. Published in Australia in 1999, Hartnett's novel is challenging and may be ultimately less rewarding for readers than the ones that followed (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Thursday's Child; <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">What the Birds See). Yet the book is characterized by the same graceful prose, unusual protagonist (though somewhat older than is typical for young adult audiences) and keen sense of place that carry the story to its hopeful conclusion. Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Feb.)

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-This hauntingly beautiful story pits 23-year-old Satchel O'Rye against the world that is his and the world he might have. He lives with his father, mother, and beloved dog in a dying town in rural Australia. Satchel's dad, who closed his service station when his son was 15 and took to his room, believes that God will provide. Despite physical problems, his mother tries to keep the family going with her nursing job. Satchel helps out, but work is hard to find and usually short-lived. While he's cutting firewood, he sees a strange, striped animal. He describes it to a friend's older sister, who recognizes it as a sidestep wolf, or thylacine, an animal that is supposed to be extinct. When Satchel hits his dog with his car, he must decide which is more important: capitalizing on the existence of the animal that has "sidestepped extinction," and thus perhaps earning enough money for his dog's medical bills and his family's survival, or protecting the freedom of the thylacine and her cub. The plot flows gently as Satchel tries to come to terms with his life and to decide whether to stay in his rut or find a different future, a decision made difficult because of his loyalty to his family. A complex, introspective novel with vivid characters.-Janet Hilbun, formerly at Sam Houston Middle School, Garland, TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.