BOOK REVIEW 

Beyond the Black Stump by Nevil Shute

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at noted writer Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Don’t forget to check out the wide range of reviews at her blog.

“You don't mean that your uncle swapped your mother for an old Mauser pistol?”

That is exactly what Stanton Laird, the young American geologist, asks red-haired Mollie Regan incredulously.

Stanton, who comes from the small quiet town of Hazel, Oregon, in distant America, has been sent by his company to the Australian outback — known as the Black Stump — to hunt for oil.

The “black stump” is an Australian term that refers to “an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote or uncivilised.”

He gets a huge culture shock no sooner he meets up with Mollie’s family, the Regans, a large and wealthy Irish family of farmers whose ranch, Laragh Station, is spread over a million acres in a remote and inhospitable part of Western Australia, known as the Lunatic.

As Stanton grows close to the Regans, he falls in love with Mollie and discovers she is illegitimate, one of a dozen-odd children who consist of real and half-caste brothers and sisters, sired by her father Pat and his younger brother, Tom, and two women, her own white mother and an aborigine. There are no divorces and remarriages in the legal sense as the men have never really been married to the women. They live together as one big family, the many siblings close to each other. 

The absence of social mores is more than made up for by the Regans healthy view of life and generous attitude toward others. They are a helpful and friendly clan and in spite of the initial apprehension of having Stanton and his gentlemanly crew explore oil on their land (on lease from the government), they welcome him and his men into their midst. The Regans, in turn, are fascinated by the professional manner in which the Americans set up camp and rig as well as the many gadgets and machinery, precision instruments, electric ice cream freezer, and glossy magazines they bring with them and share with the Regans.

The glossies provide Mollie with her first exposure to America, a modern and civilised world she dreams about and starts to yearn for.

Over a period of time, when the oil exploration attempt fails to yield results, Stanton's company tells him to pack up and return home. By now, he and Mollie are very much in love and the two decide to marry but the girl's mother, the wise and formidable Mrs. Regan, advises her daughter to put of marriage till she has lived with the Lairds in Hazel and adjusted to the American way of life. In the end it proves to be a very wise suggestion.

This is where the real story, tragic in many ways, begins. Mollie accompanies Stanton to Hazel, Oregon, where she is welcomed warmly by his parents, a kindly couple. She lives with the Lairds, helps with the chores around the house, goes about town, and grows fond of her prospective in-laws who are proud of their values and integrity. Mollie finds this a trifle unsettling considering her own upbringing.

One day, Mollie, who is portrayed as sensitive and intelligent, decides to come clean: she confronts Mrs. Laird, affectionately called "Mom" by all, and discloses everything about her past and where she comes from. The revelation sends shock waves through the Laird household, especially Mom’s sister Aunt Claudia who has a loose tongue. 

"If we get married, Stan, your people must know everything about me," a determined Mollie tells Stanton, who has long accepted her for what she is.

Mollie wants his parents and the small and conservative Frontier town of Hazel to accept her past and present as well but she is also aware that, in their hearts, the god-fearing and church-going townspeople won't, even if they pretend to; not when her own father and brother were prominent members of the IRA who fought against the British government before fleeing to Australia — it's just one of many instances of the non-conformist Regan clan that Hazel may find unpalatable.

"It'ld hurt your mother much more to learn I'm illegitimate after we're married than if she learns it now," she tells Stanton.

"It wouldn't work," Mollie concludes. "There's too much between us..."

In the end Mollie Regan, who dreamt of a new life in America, breaks her engagement and returns to the Lunatic, hopefully to David Cope, a struggling English immigrant who rears sheep on his three-hundred-thousand acre farm called Lucinda Station, not far from the Regans spread. He has been hopelessly in love with her much before Stanton arrived.

The story behind the story
Beyond the Black Stump, written in Nevil Shute’s trademark easy and laidback style, is primarily about race relations though the author handles the subject of racism with utmost sensitivity. In his opinion, people are the same wherever you go, only their lives vary according to greater or lesser degree. For instance, Mollie Regan, who is unashamed of her background, yearns to be accepted for who she is, especially when those who might not have accepted her in Hazel had ancestors who did exactly what her folks in the Lunatic did.

She compares the Lunatic to the Frontier town of Hazel a hundred years ago when “your people married Indian girls when there weren’t any white women, just like us… If you could meet one of those people now, if one of them could come to Hazel, you wouldn’t want to have him in your house, or introduce him to your friends. And if it was a girl you wouldn’t want to marry her.” So why is my family being singled out, she wants to know.

I particularly liked the part where young Mollie Regan says, “I’m a kind of Rip van Winkle, Stan, that’s come here from the Hazel of a hundred years ago, out of the past.”

Mollie comes across as more liberal and broadminded than the Lairds, for instance, when she learns of Stanton’s secret past: as a reckless youth he and best friend Chuck Sheraton had raced with their girls resulting in an accident that killed one of them. The other was found to be pregnant with either Stanton’s or Chuck’s baby. The local community ordered Chuck to marry the girl and all was forgotten and forgiven but the boy grew up to look like Stanton. When the geologist confides his bitter past to Mollie, she laughs out loud and takes it in her stride, because she, herself, is illegitimate as nearly all her siblings are. His own mother is in denial.

The author
Beyond the Black Stump (1956) is one of ten novels about Australia written by prolific British writer Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960). In fact, he wrote this book while carrying out research for another novel, On the Beach (1957), which is also about Australia. 

© Nevil Shute Norway Foundation

Shute, who was an aeronautical engineer and took part in both the world wars, spent weeks in Western Australia and lived with a family in Oregon to research material for both these novels.

“For the first time in my life I saw how people live in an English-speaking country outside England,” he is believed to have said at the time. The overseas trips firmed up his resolve to migrate to Australia with his family.

Nevil Shute wrote 24 novels and an autobiography.

Next Friday's Forgotten Book: The Payoff by Don Smith