Dirrayawadha

By Anita Heiss

From the bestselling author of Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) comes another groundbreaking historical novel about resistance, resilience and love during the frontier wars.

Miinaa was a young girl when the white ghosts first arrived. She remembers the day they raised a piece of cloth and renamed her homeland ‘Bathurst’. Now she lives at Cloverdale and works for a white family who have settled there.

The Nugents are kind, but Miinaa misses her miyagan. Her brother, Windradyne, is a Wiradyuri leader, and visits when he can, bringing news of unrest across their ngurambang. Miinaa hopes the violence will not come to Cloverdale.

When Irish convict Daniel O’Dwyer arrives at the settlement, Miinaa’s life is transformed again. The pair are magnetically drawn to each other and begin meeting at the bila in secret. Dan understands how it feels to be displaced, but they still have a lot to learn about each other. Can their love survive their differences and the turmoil that threatens to destroy everything around them?

Anita Heiss is breathing new life into the Australian historical epic. Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) shows the resistance leader Windradyne as the remarkable figure he was and surrounds him with fascinating figures otherwise lost to history. With irresistible imagination and verve, as well as a deep desire for truth telling, Anita Heiss’s novels are re-peopling our past.

About the author:

Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 23 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. Anita is also the Publisher at Large of Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster cultivating First Nations talent, and a board member of the National Justice Project and Circa Contemporary Circus. As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre, she adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage. It premiered at the 2022 Brisbane Festival and was produced by Belvoir St for the Sydney Festival in 2024.

Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai. Anita enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor.

ISBN: 9781761105272

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Credit: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Dirrayawadha/Anita-Heiss/9781761105272