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This quintessentially Australian novel set in modern day Byron Bay NSW is a tour-de-force, with a masterful plot that is both unsettling and triumphant. Young ARCHIE STENMARK is sent on an assignment to cover a story about a curse that has been cast on his father’s family by the local Indigenous tribe in Byron Bay. While ARCHIE is researching the curse, his father tries to clear his name of a crime that the town still believes he committed in his youth. In his research, ARCHIE finds out that the elders of the local tribe had cursed his ancestors when they fenced off a sacred meeting place that had been used for centuries. In his search to catalogue the tragedies associated with the curse, ARCHIE meets up with a feisty young Indigenous lawyer, who is heading up the fight for Native Title over his family’s land, but trouble erupts in the town when ARCHIE and his father support the girl’s claim. The powerful STENMARK family, who have more lucrative plans for the waterfront land, become vindictive, and as the conflict unfolds, the seaside town becomes outraged, especially when a number of murders and a cruel abduction take place. Skilfully described and compulsively readable, ‘Pointing the Bone’ is both confronting and exhilarating. Joyce has deftly drawn characters on both sides of the cultural divide, with vivid characters springing onto the page throughout. In the story, the reader is confronted by some shameful incidents wrought by the wealthy family, but after learning about them, we have a deeper understanding of how colonisation affected our First Nation people. There is a dearth of stories on our shelves that shine a light on the brave struggle of Indigenous groups, and even fewer that have a happy ending, but this inspiring book is one. ‘Pointing the Bone’ deserves to take its place on the top shelf of libraries and bookshops throughout our land.
