The Leaves

Faith and Evelyn are close friends, neighbours, and single mothers of Luke and of Mitch – and both bear the scars of the trauma of colonisation and the Stolen Generations. When Faith dies unexpectedly, a chain of events unfolds that will forever alter the lives of those left behind. As Luke faces upheaval and is propelled into the volatility of the foster system, Evelyn desperately tries to save him from the unending spiral of cruelty, poverty and disconnection from kin into which he descends, while the spectre of incarceration looms. The Leaves is a bittersweet meditation on motherhood and loss, on the power of female friendship and the role of the state in perpetuating violence. Through Luke’ s journey and Evelyn’ s own pursuit of justice, The Leaves raises larger questions about the brutality and futility of Australia’ s youth detention system, the entrenchment of disadvantage, and the failure to acknowledge the ongoing effects of historical crimes committed against Indigenous people. Will there be justice for Luke? Or will he be another invisible casualty of a broken system?

Dr Jacqueline Rule is an Australian author who holds a PhD in English from the University of Sydney, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English from Goldsmiths College (University of London) and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Technology Sydney. She is the recipient of the University of London’ s 150th Anniversary Award for English Literature. Jacqueline is admitted as a solicitor by the Supreme Court of New South Wales. She spent several years working in a legal organisation, supporting a specialist committee on youth detention in the criminal justice system.