Reviews of Paddy's Road: Life Stories of Patrick Dodson

Australian Book Review, February 2004
For many Australians, Patrick Dodson is the guy with the land rights hat and the flowing beard. With Paddy’s Road: Life stories of Patrick Dodson, Kevin Keeffe ensures that Dodson will also be remembered for being the first Aboriginal Priest and for his contributions to the reconciliation movement…While we learn a lot about the road Patrick Dodson has travelled, the book provides few significant insights into the man himself.

Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald, September 2003
The title Paddy’s Road is a clever and accurate description of the rich historical journey that underpins this biography of the Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson. Rather than just recounting Dodson’s life, this is a poignant, and often troubling, story about Broome and the Kimberley, from the first sighting by William Dampier to the modern day. Indeed, apart from scattered vignettes of events in Dodson’s life, the chronological details of his life do not start until page 148. Prior to that, anthropologist and friend Kevin Keeffe explores the dark and brutal history of black-white relations in far-north Western Australia. Then it is on to Dodson’s life – as a footballer, the first Aboriginal priest, and our most powerful Aboriginal leader (until he found he could not work for the Howard Government). This is a careful, well-researched biography of a remarkable Australian.