Tenderfoot – quick links
Tenderfoot, Toni Jordan’s eighth novel, takes place in the suburban Brisbane of Joh Bjelke-Petersen in 1975. It is told from the point of view of 12-year-old Andie Tanner as remembered by her very much older self.
Police corruption is rife and greyhound racing is an acceptable and popular sport. Queenslanders consider the people down south to be almost as bad as foreigners.
Beneath the family home lies a kennel for the greyhounds that Andie’s father breeds, trains and races, rather than paying attention to his daughter, who nonetheless adores him. She feels less devoted to her domineering mother, a barmaid who also works part-time at the local TAB, although she does share her antagonism to pretension:
‘What did you have for tea at the Byrnes’?’ my mother said. ‘Something fancy, I bet.’
. . .
She pursed her lips and spoke in her funny high voice. ‘We had caviar and drank tea with our pinkies sticking out and listened to Beethoven . . .’
Tenderfoot: greyhounds
Andie’s parents are both obsessed with greyhound racing, a passion that leaves little room for anything else. So it should be no surprise that young Andie’s ambition is to become a greyhound breeder and trainer with her own kennel.
Meanwhile, she is happy and content; she has good friends and does well at school. Totally unaware of the shocking cruelty involved in the greyhound industry, she wrongly regards the greyhounds of her childhood as pets, and in particular loves the gentle Tippy.
But then things start to go wrong for Andie. Her father leaves the family without even bothering to say goodbye to his daughter. Steve, a man with a mysterious occupation, moves in. Trying to find her father and restore her parents’ broken marriage, Andie only makes everything worse.
Tenderfoot: twists and turns
The many twists and turns involved in Andie trying to get things right make up the story. It is full of surprises and when you think you know what is going to happen next you are likely to be proved wrong.
Is Andie’s father the decent man his daughter pictures? It never occurs to Andie that her father might be having an affair with another woman. Is Steve the villain he appears to be? While Steve is an interloper, he actually is more considerate of Andie’s welfare than either of her parents. Andie’s naïve idealism fuels the plot.
The main characters – Andie, her mother, and her de facto stepfather, Steve, as well as Andie’s largely absent father and that lovely greyhound, Tippy – are all beautifully rendered. But even the minor characters you come across are perfectly evoked; Jordan’s characterisation is faultless, as is Jordan’s storytelling.
This is evident in the way Jordan lets the reader experience what Andie sees while at the same time revealing much of what is really going on. For example Andie sees her father as being too busy to spend time with her when clearly he doesn’t want to be bothered.
Tenderfoot: hectic days
Many of the readers of this book will have left their pre-teens more than a few years behind. Looking back they may recall the long-forgotten dramas, the great highs and miserable lows of their young lives in an environment their parents might well have considered as stable and relatively placid.
Possibly this book will remind them of those hectic days and of some of their misconceptions. Andie is not the only tenderfoot.
Occasionally, Andie’s older self lets you glimpse who she is now and what she has become, just enough to put an ellipsis if not a full stop to her story. Certainly enough to let you know she comes to understand the dark side of greyhound training and the unspeakable ways those dogs are treated. Enough to let you know she is nothing like either of her parents. Enough to round up the story perfectly.
Consequently, this story of a schoolgirl in a Brisbane suburb a lifetime ago becomes an engrossing page-turning saga not to be missed.
Postscript:
Jordan’s author’s note reads: ‘No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the writing of this work’, and I can assure readers of this review of the same. The unsolicited intrusion of word processors’ offers of assistance are unwelcome!
