Plains of Promise

In this brilliant novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. In the 1950s Gulf Country of Queensland’ s far North, black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic’ s Mission. When Ivy Koopundi and her mother arrive at the Mission, they are immediately separated and Ivy’ s life changes irrevocably. Years later, Mary, a young woman who is working for a city-based Aboriginal Coalition, visits the old Mission and learns of her mother’ s and grandmother’ s suffering there. Mary’ s return reignites community anxieties, leading the Council of Elders to again turn to their spirit world. This stunning novel, from the only writer to win both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize, showcases Alexis Wright’ s distinctive and far-reaching talents.

Dr Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, teacher and researcher, and the editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award– winning, world-first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP, 2022). Always Will Be won the 2022 David Unaipon Award. Mykaela has won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize for creative non-fiction and the University of Sydney’ s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research. Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Plains of Promise and Carpentaria as well as The Swan Book Wright has also published three works of non-fiction: Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Wright is the only author to win both the Miles Franklin Award (in 2007 for Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (in 2018 for Tracker).

Introduction by Mykaela Saunders ix Introduction by Geordie Williamson xv Part I – The Timekeeper’ s Shadow 1 Part II – Glimpses of Distant Hills 205 Part III – Victory Lane 259 Part IV – Plains of Papery Grass 311 Acknowledgements 385