Instead, at the opening, the novel seems to be set at the point of first contact and colonial settlement in Western Australia. It follows multiple threads, principally the stories of Native escapee Jacky; Sister Bagra, a Settler and head of a colonial mission school; Trooper Rohan, hunting both Jacky and Johnny; and ‘free’ Native Esperance. In the intersections between storylines and through the experiences of each character, we are offered insight into the physical and emotional violence of colonial occupation, the social and political distance between the Natives’ and the Settlers’ lives. The capitalisation of these terms is an important idiosyncrasy in the historical setting, but in reading it seems natural given the impact this distinction has – the systemic racism, the danger and depression faced by the Native characters.

Coleman’s novel won the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Fellowship, (an initiative supporting emerging Indigenous writers, responsible for producing of excellent works like Alison Whittaker’s Lemons in the Chicken Wire [Magabala, 2016]). While the novel is in many ways a début – there is some redundancy and repetition in developing both themes and characters, for instance – it is an intriguing read. The novel’s epigraph, from Goanna’s hit single ‘Solid Rock’, focuses the narrative on colonial first contact: ‘They were standing on the shore one day, / saw the white sails in the sun. Wasn’t long before they felt the sting, / white man, white law, white gun.’ (That Goanna’s frontman Shane Howard is not himself Indigenous should perhaps be read as the first indication that the consideration of race in this novel will be complex and subtle.) The final line of this epigraph is important – subjugation by both law and weaponry is from the onset a key theme.

This dissection of the colonial application of law is at its most pointed in the depiction of child removal within the mission system. Sister Bagra, in ‘educating’ the children in her mission, openly contemplates their legal status, dismissing their intelligence and thus situating them as animals under law. Thinking in this way legitimises for her the life of slavery for which the children are being prepared. Part of the strength of the novel is the manner in which such thought is offered to the reader – Coleman’s use of free indirect discourse draws the reader step-by-step into complicity with Bagra’s twisted logic, and shows the damage of this perspective as a social discourse. That this is a commentary is directly relevant to contemporary Australia is not difficult to see: the novel’s title makes that clear from the outset.

Claire G. ColemanAlongside this (shattering) depiction of violence, however, Coleman also offers poignant representation of the value of culture and art. The human instinct to artistic expression is seen as something transcendental, crossing the void between Settler and Native: ‘There was something unfathomable about the Native voices; no two sung exactly the same note, yet the different tones combined to make the whole unfathomably larger. He was surprised to be so moved ...’ As a counterpoint to Coleman’s emphasis on the violence of colonisation, the power of art offers a fragile thread of hope, reduplicated in the strength of Coleman’s own voice. The afterword, for instance, very deliberately connects the novel to a tradition of Indigenous writing.

Similarly, the novel contains epigraphs beyond the lines from ‘Solid Rock’, one at the opening of each chapter, all of which are ‘excerpts’ from fictional texts. These introduce a subtle commentary as to how, in hindsight, culture is recorded and perpetuated, and at the same time, on what is lost. Several of these focus on the need to protect Native culture, questioning the manner in which Indigenous art is maintained and consumed in contemporary Australian society. In this, the novel’s interest in structures of law opens into a wider consideration of the construction of any society through language, legislative, cultural, and historical.

In all these interests, the novel’s thematic implications support what is at heart an assumption made by the reader: that the Natives of this society are Australia’s Indigenous people. Despite the warning in the blurb, the novel gently and persuasively lulls the reader into understanding the setting as historical fiction, encouraging him or her to participate in assumptions about the characters and social politics at play. Coming mid-narrative, the twist then forces the reader into a consciousness of their own reading and the ideas it has perpetuated, pointing to and undermining stereotypes which tend to frame the reading of colonial spaces. The lines between colonial ‘Other’ and self are blurred. This is very clever writing. The result is a metafictional questioning of how we read, which lifts the narrative to a new level. The blurb’s assertion that this place is ‘all too familiar’ cuts both ways, making clear the connection between the novel and history, but also pointing to the danger of complaisance in looking back.