Cirrus@Austlit

'The plot unfurls slowly in Mirandi Riwoe’s Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which opens in the Palmer River goldfields in early colonial Australia. Disguised as a man for her physical safety, Ying toils with her brother Lai Yue in the hope of procuring enough of a fortune to take back to China, but life on the fields is relentless. They soon realise that gold-digging is untenable, and head to nearby Maytown in search of more stable work. There, second-generation British settler Meriem has been banished from her home town after an unwanted pregnancy. Now a housekeeper for sex worker Sophie, she is shunned by the townsfolk. After Lai Yue leaves for an overland expedition and Ying begins working as a shopkeeper for local Chinese man Jimmy, Meriem’s and Ying’s paths converge. They embark on a friendship coloured by caution and curiosity, an archetypal interracial tale of differences as both protagonists awkwardly feel their way around each other.' (Introduction)