The stunning photograph on the cover of Jenni Ogden’s novel, Dancing with Dragons, drew me in. I was immediately captivated by the “Acknowledgement of Country,” where she pays tribute to the Aboriginal Australians as the traditional custodians and first storytellers of the Coral Coast, the setting for the book.
Drawn, captivated, then engrossed throughout as the scenery appeared in vivid color and the characters came to life and walked off the page and into my heart. Except for the villain— I didn’t like him at all.
The protagonist, Gaia, and her older brother, Bron, are the children of an Australian father and American mother, Margot, who was once a well-known ballet dancer in New York. Their barn has been converted to a studio where Margot taught both children classical ballet.
Another love the family shares is snorkeling in the coral reef along their seaside property. As the book opens, Gaia discovers a pair of seadragons engaged in their courtship dance. And this is where I fell in love with the seadragons. Ogden writes, “More than half the length of her arm, the creature’s long thin body had dark pinky-red paddle-shaped seaweedy-like appendages rimmed neatly in black sprouting from it, almost making it disappear.”
I stopped reading and imagined myself floating alongside Gaia, seeing through her eyes. I’ve had the good fortune to do a bit of snorkeling. I loved seeing the many different species of marine life but never felt comfortable as one who grew up near the sea might. Ogden’s description of the weedy seadragons took me back more than two decades. In the darkened exhibit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, I stood transfixed, watching in awe as seadragons, magnificent living works of wonder, fluttered and floated. Saddened as I was by their captivity, wishing I could see them in their natural environment, I remained thankful for the conservation efforts.
The glorious description of the reef’s beauty ends abruptly in the first chapter as tragedy strikes the family. It will be years before Gaia is able to return to her beloved seashore, no longer a child but, at sixteen, not fully an adult
Gaia is a remarkable young woman whose bravery and resilience are admirable. Her loneliness lessens when she befriends a kangaroo and a goshawk. The animals, named Rita Roo and Gos, are well-developed characters with personalities any animal-loving reader will enjoy. There are anxious moments as we fear for their safety, especially when the neighbor, often a mean drunk, is “out shooting roos” or has a dead dingo on the back of his truck.
Ogden doesn’t gloss over the racist comments or sugarcoat the treatment of the Aboriginal people. When Gaia meets Jarrah, an eleven-year-old Aboriginal boy, the nephew of her neighbors and only friends, she knows she must protect him. Despite a seven-year age difference, the two become best friends.
Themes of trauma, loneliness, racism, environmental dangers, greed, and love run through this novel. They’re all here, rendered in evocative prose; yet love rises to the top and becomes, for me, the focus of the story.
This is a book that would appeal to young adult readers as well. Ending with a feel-good surprise I didn’t see coming, Dancing with Dragons left me smiling and full of hope.