Home

A story of homecoming, this engrossing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at ‘the place where the rivers meet’, the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story of Candice’s Aboriginal family, the twentieth century falls away.

Garibooli, now renamed Elizabeth, is sent to work as a housemaid, but marriage soon offers escape from the terror of the master’s night-time visits. Her displacement carries into the lives of her seven children — their stories witness to the impact of orphanage life and the consequences of having dark skin in post-war Australia. Vividly rekindled, the lives of her family point the direction home for Candice.

Home is a powerful first novel from an award-winning author who understands the power of stories to bridge past and present.