Edenglassie

There are thirty eight people waiting to read Edenglassie after me! I hadn't realised that Melissa Lucashenko started as a young adult writer, and though Edenglassie is an adult novel, Lucashenko retains the pace and immediacy and the emotional punch of the best young adult titles.

Edenglassie was one of the first names for the settlement of Brisbane, and the novel is set in parallel time lines, one in the present day and one in the mid 1850s, in the early days of colonial Queensland (still known as New South Wales). Lucashenko creates a vivid and all-too-real portrait of a place in transition, where First Nations people still outnumber white settlers and the two peoples are able to live together, sometimes in relative harmony and sometimes in brutal conflict. What sets Edenglassie apart is the steady focus on the First Nations characters: bold Mulanyin, beautiful Nita, resolute Yerrin, wise Diwalbin.

The parallel modern day storyline takes a more comic twist, but its links to the distant past keep it grounded. Edenglassie is one of the most readable and relatable accounts of early Australian settler society I've read, and I'm not surprised that there are eager readers lining up to consume it.