LISTENING TO COUNTRY
Ros Moriarty
Ros Moriarty is a white woman married to an Aboriginal man. Over the course of many visits to her husband's family, she was fascinated to discover that the older tribal women had a deep sense of happiness and purpose that transcended the abject material poverty, illness and increasing violence of their community—a happiness that she feels is related to an essential 'warmth of heart' that these women say has gone missing in today's world.
In May 2006, she had the chance to spend time in the Tanami Desert in northern central Australia with 200 Aboriginal women, performing women's Law ceremonies. Listening to Country is the story of that trip and her friendship with these women, as she tells their stories and passes on their wisdom and understanding.
Offering a privileged window into the spiritual and emotional world of Aboriginal women, this book is a moving story of common human experience, the getting and passing on of wisdom, and the deep friendship and bonds between women. It carries a moving and profound sense of optimism in the fundamental humanity we all share.
Full of warmth, honesty and insight, Listening to Country shares a rare and vivid insight into the lives, wisdom, humour and difficulties of the lives of Aboriginal women - right here, right now.
Allen & Unwin, paperback, 9781741753806
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WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
Wendy James
Susan and Ed Middleton are perfectly content with their lives. Two kids, two cars, a solid brick bungalow in a respectable Northern beaches suburb.
But when Susan's older sister, who vanished as a teenager, reappears to claim an inheritance, everything is set to change.
Where Have You Been? is a beautifully crafted suspense novel that keeps readers guessing.
Univ. of Western Australia Press, paperback, 9781921401466
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THE LISTENER
Shira Nayman
Bertram Reiner, a charismatic and brilliant man diagnosed with a severe case of battle fatigue after WW2, is treated by Dr. Harrison, the distinguished and steadfast head of the hospital, who finds him the most challenging patient of his career. Their sessions leave Dr. Harrison slipping into a frightening, but also strangely enlivening twilight existence that renders the boundaries between sanity and insanity disquietingly blurred. When Dr. Harrison discovers that Bertram is having an affair with Matilda, the head nurse, who he himself has feelings for, his own state of yearning rises and throws his sanity into the balance.
Simon & Schuster, paperback, 9780731814510
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THE WIVES OF HENRY OADES
Johanna Moran
In 1890, Henry Oades decided to undertake the arduous sea voyage from England to New Zealand in order to further his family's fortunes. Here they settled on the lush but wild coast—although it wasn't long before disaster struck in the most unexpected of ways. A local Maori tribe, incensed at their treatment at the hands of the settlers, kidnapped Mrs Oades and her four children, and vanished into the rugged hills surrounding the town. Henry searched ceaselessly for his family, but two grief-stricken years later was forced to conclude that they must be dead. In despair he shipped out to San Francisco to start over, eventually falling in love with and marrying a young widow.
In the meantime, Margaret Oades and her children were leading a miserable existence, enslaved to the local tribe. When they contracted smallpox they were cast out and, ill and footsore, made their way back to town, five years after they were presumed dead. Discovering that Henry was now half a world away, they were determined to rejoin him. So months later they arrived on his doorstep in America and Henry Oades discovered that he had two wives and many dilemmas....
This is a darkly comic but moving historical fiction debut about love and family, based on a controversial court case from the early 1900s.
HarperCollins, paperback, 9780007339419
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TEN HAIL MARYS
Kate Howarth
Ten Hail Marys follows the first seventeen years of Kate Howarth's life in Sydney and rural New South Wales. Raised by various Indigenous relatives, she is abandoned by her mother and then her grandmother, and through it all manages to believe that she will have a better life. In the mid-1960s, at the age of fifteen, she becomes pregnant and is sent to St Margaret's Home for unwed mothers in Sydney, where she resists intense pressure to give up her baby for adoption. She becomes one of the few women to ever leave the Home with her baby.
Ten Hail Marys tells the story of a childhood beset by hardship, abuse, profound grief, poverty, emotional ambivalence and more than enough unpredictable turns of events in any young life. While at times shocking in her frankness, Howarth is never self-pitying or bitter. Her natural gift for storytelling, her cast of larger-than-life characters, including Mamma (her grandmother), whose presence looms large from the outset, her vivid sense of place and dark understated humour make Ten Hail Marys one of the most compelling memoirs of the year.
Univ. of Queensland Press, paperback, 9780702237706
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