A cloud of blue smoke drifted above the men’s heads. Their voices rose and fell like a car engine getting revved. Players sat on the white bench that ran around the walls. They smoked and tied big ice blocks covered in tea towels to their legs. Men were everywhere, smelling of  beer and sweat, and liniment, but Ron couldn’t spot his father. And he’d lost sight of Syd.
 

Three generations are forced to confront the pervasive violence that hangs over them like a ghost, and the distances to which they have carried their forebears’ pain. We. Are. Family. is a sensitive and rugged episodic novel which ruminates on the damaging idea of Australian masculinity with tenderness and dry humor. Paul Mitchell unravels the twisting threads that tie us to the past and the trauma that is handed down through families.

 

“Mitchell’s writing is challenging, exhilarating, and touched with a deep sense of humanity”                    

                                                                                                                  — Tony Birch, author of Blood