Bloodlines

You make the best choices you can at the time Beth, knowing you’ll never have to live this life again.’ Val shakes her head, her voice cracks. ‘You’d never want to.’

Thirty-one-year-old Beth, who’s grown up in Western Australia’s wheatbelt, is running from her past when she heads to an island in Papua New Guinea. Interwoven with Beth’s narrative about the joys and brutalities of island life is the story of her parents' passionate, tender love for each other. But Clem and Rose’s union is beset with tragedy, forever marking the lives of those around them.

Bloodlines is a layered novel with shifting settings, times and voices. At its heart it is a story about love – love found and love lost – and the choices that shape us. If offers insight into the complexities of daily life in Papua New Guinea and how it feels to be an outsider in our closest neighbour’s land. It is also a story about family, exploring the bonds that tie us to our clan – specifically, the changing relationship between father and daughter as a young girl grows into a woman; the grief, and acceptance required. On many levels, it is a novel about letting go of the past and forgiveness of self, of saving and being saved. Above all, Bloodlines asks us to consider what it means to make a home, and what we might owe to those who dwell in it.

The major achievement of this deftly written novel lies in its balancing of dual narratives, as they are revealed in the past and present. Shifting between the perspectives of five memorable characters, this ambitious, big-hearted, and at times confronting novel, heralds an exciting new voice in Australian literature.