Every third chapter takes the form of parts of one continuous letter from the fictional Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf to The British Society of Ethnography in 1915. The epistolary structure of the third narrative is both a fascinating insight into the past and a first-person account of invasion and colonialism viewed through a different lens.
August rediscovers old friends, estranged family and the spirit of her Poppy as she realises that she is indeed Home. August throws herself into the campaign against the mine, hoping that if she can find her grandfather’s dictionary, and other artifacts long lost, it will give them a chance to retain the land against the planned development. The family’s grief is overshadowed by the news that Prosperous and the surrounding farmland is about to be repossessed by a tin mining company. When she returns, grief-stricken and guilty all over again, she reconnects with her Nana and her extended family and begins to get more of a sense of who she is and how she is inextricably linked to the land. She left her family and her country after a terrible tragedy a loss that was too huge to bear. The second narrative concerns August Gondiwindi, Poppy’s granddaughter, who arrives back in Massacre Plains to attend Albert’s funeral after ten years living overseas. He is determined to put it all on paper, to note it for posterity, so that others who come after him will learn and be curious to find out more. As he does so, he gives us pieces of information about his own life from childhood, and he recounts his many journeys with his ancestors into the dreaming, where he learns from his elders some of the knowledge gained from thousands of years farming, cultivating, fishing, hunting and working the land, gathering in groups and societies, and telling ornate stories through complex oral histories. Albert knows he is coming to the end of his life, and so he works on an extensive project to write down Aboriginal words and then explain their meaning in English.
The first is the dictionary of Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi, who has spent his life at Prosperous House on Massacre Plains on the banks of the Murrumby River. The novel is structured on a framework of three narratives.
In a proud memorialising of Aboriginal words and their meanings, Winch pays homage to her past and to the many elders who have gone before her, she recognises the important work done by others to faithfully record and remember language, and she tells a moving story that emphasises the pain and suffering of our First Nations Peoples, and the ripples of intergenerational trauma that still remain today. The much-anticipated new novel from author Tara June Winch, The Yield (Penguin Random House 2019) is a love song to language, culture and Indigenous heritage.
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