Published 3rd July 2025 by Oneworld.
From the cover of the book:
TWO UNFORGETTABLE STORIES. TWO FAMILIES. TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF HISTORY.1854: When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Brisbane – or Edenglassie, as it was once briefly known – his community still outnumbers the British settlers. Tensions are simmering just beneath the surface of a fragile peace, but hopes for independence are running high. Yet when colonial unrest tears through the region, Mulanyin's passion for his new bride clashes with his loyalty to a homeland in danger.
Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny when her grandmother Eddie has a serious fall. Winona just wants the obstinate centenarian back on her feet, but a shrewd journalist has other ideas. Eddie becomes a local celebrity, dominating the headlines as 'Queensland's Oldest Aboriginal'.
Her time in the spotlight brings past and present crashing together, the legacy of Nita and Mulanyin's tragic past reaching into Winona and Eddie's lives with consequences they couldn't have predicted.
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Brisbane, 1854. Mulanyin meets and falls in love with beautiful Nita, but these are troubled times. While his community outnumbers the British settlers, tensions are high, and when colonial unrest finds him caught between the interests of his bride and his homeland, he faces difficult choices.
Brisbane, 2024. When one-hundred-year old Eddie takes a fall, it brings together her fiery granddaughter Winona and the doctor treating her obstinate grandmother, Dr Johnny. As love blossoms between Winona and Johnny, Eddie finds herself becoming a reluctant celebrity.
In a fascinating dual timeline novel, Lucashenko delves into Australia's troubled colonial past in Brisbane, once known as Edenglassie. The story unfurls in two timelines, the 1850s and 2024, which thrum with similar themes, despite the different backdrops.
Essentially, there are two emotional stories here, which clash together when the tragic past leads to consequences that ripple into the future. As a non-Aussie, what happens is a brutal education about uncomfortable history around the treatment of the country's indigenous population, and they are hard lessons to learn.
The rhythm of the story takes a little while to get going, and you do have to familiarise yourself with the pattern of spoken language, but the characters spark from the page - and once you get a handle on Lucashenko's writing, there is a lot to admire in her whip smart dialogue.
This book is a proper heart-wrencher, and I would find it hard to say I 'enjoyed' it given the heavy dose of darkness and violence that inevitably comes with it, but there are lovely moments of tenderness and a wealth of humour of the pitch black variety that keep you from being overwhelmed.
Powerful and haunting, this is just the kind of book that set you off down a rabbit hole of additional reading...
Edenglassie is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Oneworld for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie (Aboriginal) author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier's Award for a work of State Significance. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, the Stella Prize, two Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, two Queensland Literary Awards and two NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead.
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