An immensely rewarding, old-fashioned story about an eleven-year-old boy in 1930s Australia who lives with his apparently “mad” Great-War-veteran grandfather, Fyfe, on the banks of the Murray River in the fictional town of St. Helen’s. Spit is almost a wild boy. He does attend school (barefoot), but he can’t quite be civilized. Independent, self-sufficient, genuine, and able to effortlessly command the respect of his peers and adults alike, Spit is an object of great interest to the beautiful and fervent Betty Arbuckle, an evangelical mother of two who wants to save the boy’s soul and have him removed from his grandfather’s care to be raised as a Christian. When Spit’s grandfather dies after a particularly bad “fit”, Betty Arbuckle and Grace Tree, the mother of Spit’s friend Sadie, become opponents in a legal fight to adopt him. There is a major complication: adoption law in 1928 Australia has determined that the religion of the adoptee and the adoptive family be the same. Spit’s family was Presbyterian; the Arbuckles are Protestant; the Trees are Catholic.

There are echoes of Huckleberry Finn here, and the book put me in mind of a wonderful, more recent novel for older children/younger teens: Alabama Moon by Watt Key. Like these books, Aldridge’s is concerned with a boy on the fringes of society, who is deeply and essentially good.

There’s a bit of language in the book that may trouble the politically correct—references to “”black fellas” and “African heathens”, but I feel that taken in the context of the novel, the use of these words is not offensive.

I really enjoyed this book. ( )