The plot focuses on three men – Blackie, Rips, and Carlos – who have embarked on a road trip to Wiradjuri country. Blackie and Rips have recently been released from prison, where they met. Blackie is intent on enacting revenge against Hunter McWilliams, the white police officer who was responsible for his incarceration. Blackie whiled away his prison sentence ‘imagining how he would hurt the cop with every punch he threw’.

Dancing Home has been promoted as ‘Koori-noir’, and it certainly has a noirish feel. The novel traverses some emotionally and aesthetically bleak territory. Even the book’s lighter moments are underscored by the threat of violence. Collis demonstrates fine skills in character development. For example, Blackie might be tough and streetwise in the manner of the classic noir protagonist, but he is also vulnerable and human. His plans for revenge are secondary to the main challenge he faces, staying alive in a world of state-sanctioned racism. The relationship between the three central characters is well developed and believable.

Dancing Home’s historical setting is opaque. For example, the novel opens with a reference to the Antz Pantz commercials of the early 1990s. There is a sense that the ad campaign is contemporaneous with the rest of the narrative. Later, however, one character refers to Bill Clinton (US president from 1993–2001) as though he hailed from the distant past. This issue aside, Dancing Home is commendable. The novel won the 2016 David Unaipon Award for a previously unpublished Indigenous Australian writer. This reviewer hopes to read more of Collis’s prose.