When their taste of city life disappoints, Mick and Toad return to Bantam, their home town. Unemployed and broke, their biggest problem seems to be how to survive until next dole day.
For Mick and his friends life is about drinking, fishing and looking for girls. For Mick there are also chooks and his dog, Jezebel.
But life has a funny way of turning serious. Bantam is a town like any other – with problems of unemployment, domestic violence and youth suicide.
Will Mick ever find balance in the roller cosater ride of his existence?
Bantam is a special book. To blend humour and tragedy is a delicate process, but author Terry Whitebeach pulls it off superbly. Readers will find themselves laughing, crying and cheering Mick and his mate Toad on, right to the last page.
Author Terry Whitebeach began working on Bantam after her son Michael Brown moved to a small town and started sending letters home telling her of his adventures. The stories he told seemed to be funnier and more terrible than anything she could imagine, so she wrote them down.
Bantam is Whitebeach’s second young adult novel and her son’s first.
Bantam, by Terry Whitebeach and Michael Brown
Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002