Author(s): Rachel Hennessy

Australian Fiction

She let go of the screen door and it slammed shut, echoing in the quiet. For a moment, I could only see her eyes, almost separate from the rest of her. They held something, something long lost to me. She dissolved into the darkness and I stood alone on the concrete, flexing my hands. Abo, nigger, darky. Abo, nigger, darky. In postwar Sydney, Grace Smith takes Mary, a young Aboriginal girl, into her home. She believes she will be able to save the child by giving her all the benefits of white society. But Mary's arrival has unexpected consequences as Grace's past comes back to haunt, and condemn her. Runner-up in the Australian/Vogel award, The Heaven I Swallowed is a tale of the Stolen Generations, told from the perspective of the white perpetrator.