Jesustown

From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft that will capture the national imagination

Morally bereft popular historian Patrick Renmark flees London in disgrace after the accidental death of his infant son. With one card left to play, he reluctantly takes a commission to write the biography of his legendary pioneering adventurer-anthropologist grandfather.

With no enthusiasm and even less integrity, Patrick travels to Jesustown, the former mission town in remote Australia where his grandfather infamously brokered 'peace' between the Indigenous custodians of the area and the white constabulary. He hasn't been back there since he was a teenager when a terrible confrontation with his grandfather made him vow never to return.

Of course nothing is as it seems or as Patrick wants it to be. Unable to lay his own son to rest, Patrick must re-examine the legacy of his renowned grandfather and face the repercussions of his actions on subsequent generations. Will what he finds bring him redemption or add to the vault of family secrets and terrible guilt he keeps uncovering?

From award-winning journalist Paul Daley comes a gripping multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft, and the myths that stand between us and history's unpalatable truths.

• Shortlisted, 2023 ACT Notable Book Awards

About the Author

Paul Daley is an author, journalist, essayist and short story writer. His books have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's History Prize and ACT Book of the Year. He has won two Walkley Awards and the National Press Club Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism. His essays have appeared in Meanjin and Griffith Review and he writes 'Postcolonial', a column for The Guardian about Australian national identity, history and Indigenous culture.