Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko, UQP
Edenglassie was the name of the penal colony that ultimately became Brisbane and this is the setting for a haunting new epic novel by one of our finest storytellers.
It’s 2024 and Granny Eddie has tripped over on a tree root outside Brisbane’s maritime museum and is knocked out cold. She’s an elder lying badly injured and dazed in the dirt of her ancestors, on her country, and yet “the whitefellas are walking well out of their way to ignore her”. Desperate and tearful, Eddie finally welcomes “the kindness” of two teens – a girl and boy. “Students with foreign eyes in their heads to see she was hurt, and foreign brains in their heads to know she was an old, old Goorie woman who needed some blooming help, quick smart.”
The 100-or-so-year-old Eddie’s sight is badly impaired and she’s in a lot of pain when she ends up in a crisp hospital bed under the care of Dr Johnny. As the doc embarks on treating our rather cantankerous Eddie he meets her equally feisty granddaughter, Winona, who has just been sacked from her job at the bakery for turning up late. Johnny is immediately smitten and as he tries to woo Winona, author Melissa Lucashenko weaves a tandem and somewhat more romantic love story between Mulanyin and Nita in 1854.
We are in Yagara country (around Brisbane) and
