[2] The town of Praiseworthy, in Australia's north, is home to Cause Man Steel (also known as Widespread Planet), who sees an end-of-the-world crisis looming.

Cause and Dance are resented by the assimilationist citizens of Praiseworthy, especially the albino mayor Ice Pick, and the town is consumed by religious fervor and Native Title land disputes.

During a contentious meeting with a government representative, the ancestral spirits of the Aboriginal people destroy signs installed as part of the intervention with lightning, while the unruliness of Cause’s donkeys causes the town to turn even further against him.

The magazine's critical summary reads: "Like Wright's previous works, Praiseworthy is a narrative hodgepodge that includes "oral storytelling and history" as well as "ancestral myth and contemporary heroism" (Sydney Morning Herald) and Aboriginal Dreamtime and Songlines.

If one wants to feel the grit of Indigenous sovereignty, or to see it working in its most unassimilable and joyously maddening forms, then Wright's new novel offers that possibility.