'From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft that will capture the national imagination.
'Morally bankrupt popular historian Patrick Renmark leaves London in disgrace after the accidental death of his infant son. With one card left to play, he takes a commission to write the biography of his pioneering anthropologist grandfather.
'With no enthusiasm and even less integrity, Patrick travels to the former mission town in Australia's far north where his grandfather famously brokered 'peace' between the Indigenous people of the area and the white constabulary.
'Of course nothing is as it seems, or as Patrick wants it to be. Unable to lay his own son to rest, Patrick unwillingly becomes part of local lawyer Jericho Bakerman's quest to return the settlement's ancestral remains to Country.' (Publication summary)
Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022
Selected as one of the ABR Podcast's best books of 2022
'Paul Daley will be familiar to many readers as a respected journalist expressly committed to exposing the blind spots of white culture’s dominant myths about Indigenous history and Australia’s national identity. Daley is perhaps less well known as a novelist and playwright. These two interests in his work – historical research and imaginative writing – inform his powerful second novel, Jesustown, Daley’s seventh book, and one which he felt ‘compelled’ to write.' (Introduction)
'How can fiction contribute to the “truth” that the Uluru Statement asks us to tell? Allen and Unwin’s answer to that question is, in part, one of paratext. By composing a book’s paratext, a publisher addresses the reader about how to experience the book. The paratext of Paul Daley’s Jesustown includes 12 signed commendations on the first four pages and a four-page “Author Note” at the end of the story.' (Introduction)
'How can fiction contribute to the “truth” that the Uluru Statement asks us to tell? Allen and Unwin’s answer to that question is, in part, one of paratext. By composing a book’s paratext, a publisher addresses the reader about how to experience the book. The paratext of Paul Daley’s Jesustown includes 12 signed commendations on the first four pages and a four-page “Author Note” at the end of the story.' (Introduction)
'Paul Daley will be familiar to many readers as a respected journalist expressly committed to exposing the blind spots of white culture’s dominant myths about Indigenous history and Australia’s national identity. Daley is perhaps less well known as a novelist and playwright. These two interests in his work – historical research and imaginative writing – inform his powerful second novel, Jesustown, Daley’s seventh book, and one which he felt ‘compelled’ to write.' (Introduction)
