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HarperVia
August 2022
On Sale: August 16, 2022
368 pages
ISBN: 0063140950
EAN: 9780063140950
Kindle: B087T5XC45
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Ancient Classics
For all known time, Muraging’s people, the Darug, have lived on this land between the river and the sea. But change comes swiftly in the early years of the nineteenth century when White settlers begin to arrive, laying claim to the continent, long inhabited by Aboriginal tribes like Muraging’s, for the British empire. At ten years old, Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her father, where the missionaries call her Mary James, force her to abandon her culture and language, and teach her subjects they believe will save her soul: English, Christianity, and housework. Six years later, seeking a brighter future, Muraging flees the school, embarking on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place in an unfamiliar and unsteady new world—an odyssey far more winding and treacherous than she ever dreamed. Spanning two decades, from 1816-1835, and set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people in Parramatta and Sydney, Benevolence sheds light on the heartbreaking violence and erasure of colonization, as well as remarkable survival and resistance—a vivid and compelling portrait of the Aboriginal Australians whose way of life is forever altered.
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