AustLit

'Mysteriously abandoned by his mother at an early age, torn between his loyalties to a nostalgic, Victorian grandfather and to a warm, Irish-Catholic grandmother, and completely captivated by the adolescent capers of his heroic footballer uncle, the young Jude [Watson] is forced to create many names for himself before he is able to carve his own place in the uncertain, adult world. Jude Rowe-Jones, St Jude Hope of the Hopeless, JRJ the dashing naval officer, Judd the failed schoolboy-poet, Judah the biblical lion ... The names accumulate, but a question constantly echoes behind all these facades and all through Jude's life: "Who the hell are you?" His world is the growing city of Adelaide in the nineteen-fifties. It's postwar Australia, new waves of European migration, the advent of American pop culture with souped-up FJ Holdens, rock-and-roll beach parties and teenage jiving at the drive-in ... It is a world that is rapidly changing, very much like the shifting sand that Jude played in as a child.' (Dustcover)