Danny Russel, precocious child of Scottish emigrants, is a born survivor. He soon goes native in working-class Elizabeth, South Australia's new model city. In the dusty streets and playgrounds of Elizabeth, Danny and his friends learn to live by their wits. Theirs is a world of stolen pleasures and elemental violence, of endless variations on the 'battle between Good and Evil, though to us then it was more a straightforward question of whether to Kill or Be Killed'.

Sometimes frightening, often funny, In Elizabeth follows Danny's progress from prepubescent revolutionary to self-styled Scribe of Elizabeth, and finally to penniless escapee.

In this startling first novel, Stewart Henderson casts a bold and ironic eye over the frustrations and fantasies of growing up on the urban frontier.