Benevolence: A Novel

How good it is to hear a Darug voice speaking of Darug history.Kate Grenville, author of The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize

Blending the mythical power of Téa Obreht and the epic scope of Min Jin Lee, a searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done beforea beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world.

For all known time, Muragings people, the Darug, have lived on this land between the river and the sea. But change comes swiftly in the early years of the nineteenth century when White settlers begin to arrive, laying claim to the continent, long inhabited by Aboriginal tribes like Muragings, for the British empire. 

At ten years old, Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her father, where the missionaries call her Mary James, force her to abandon her culture and language, and teach her subjects they believe will save her soul: English, Christianity, and housework. Six years later, seeking a brighter future, Muraging flees the school, embarking on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place in an unfamiliar and unsteady new worldan odyssey far more winding and treacherous than she ever dreamed. 

Spanning two decades, from 1816-1835, and set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people in Parramatta and Sydney, Benevolence sheds light on the heartbreaking violence and erasure of colonization, as well as remarkable survival and resistancea vivid and compelling portrait of the  Aboriginal Australians whose way of life is forever altered. 

Award-winning Australian writer Julie Jansons draws on historical events to recreate this pivotal timethings that may have happened to her own ancestorsgiving voice to an Aboriginal experience of early-settlement in Australia.