Cirrus@Austlit

'She Is the Earth is the luminous new verse novel from celebrated poet Ali Cobby Eckermann. It charts a journey through grief and celebrates the healing power of Country. We follow Eckermann’s soft footfalls in the open (but far from empty) spaces between earth and sky; from sandstone to wetlands, from plains to mountain ranges.

'Eckermann’s writing soars in this meditative and transformative piece. Soaked in lightness and dark, history and dreaming, her words will move you, shake you, devastate you and uplift you. This book is full of unexpected beauty in slow, contemplative moments. Read it to see the ‘She’ in and around all of us.' (Publication summary)

'A deeply personal, profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs.

'We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people.

'There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land. Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually and physically.

'Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water.

'We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be.'  (Publication summary)

'1852

'When the township of Gundagai is devastated by raging floodwaters, two local Wiradjuri men, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, risk their lives to rescue a third of the town's residents in bark canoes on the treacherous Murrumbidgee River.

'Among those saved are James and David Bradley, wealthy settlers. The Bradleys leave for Wagga Wagga, with James’s new bride, Louisa – and Yarri’s daughter, Wagadhaany, their Aboriginal servant, removing her from her beloved family and country. As a Quaker, Louisa’s mission is to help the Wiradjuri people, including Wagadhaany, and the two women develop an unorthodox friendship.

'In Wagga Wagga, Wagadhaany meets Yindyamarra, a young Wiradjuri stockman working for the Bradleys, and they fall deeply in love. They dream of a better life, of children, and of going home, away from the degradation of being owned – and one day, with their young family, they set out on a journey along the river of their ancestors in search of lost family and country – one that will bring hope and heartache.

'Set on timeless Wiradjuri country where the life-giving waters of the rivers can make or break dreams, and based on devastating true events, River of Dreams is an epic story of love, loss and belonging.'

(Source : Simon and Schuster)

'Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save Sissy and protect everything she loves.

'In The White Girl, Miles-Franklin-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on the 1960s and the devastating government policy of taking Indigenous children from their families.'  (Publication summary)

'From Kim Scott, two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, in equal parts brutal, mysterious and idealistic, about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...

'Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar's descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife's dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.

'But the sins of the past will not be so easily expunged.

'We walk with the ragtag group through this taboo country and note in them glimmers of re-connection with language, lore, country. We learn alongside them how countless generations of Noongar may have lived in ideal rapport with the land. This is a novel of survival and renewal, as much as destruction; and, ultimately, of hope as much as despair.' (Publication summary)