Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A heartbreaking, darkly funny and deeply moving memoir from a fearlessly talented writer
Delivered on the banks of the Mainoru River by her two full-blood grandmothers, Marie Munkara was born with light skin which meant one thing - it would only be a matter of time before she would be taken by the authorities and given to a white family to be raised.
Then twenty-eight years later an old baptismal card falling out of a book changed the course of her life forever. It was a link to her past.
Knowing that she had to follow her heart or forever live to regret it Marie set out to find the family that she had lost, leaving her strict white Catholic parents aghast - why dig up the past?
With devastating honesty, humour and courage, the award-winning author of Every Secret Thing shares her extraordinary journey of discovery to find her origins.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Marie Munkara was 28, drinking a glass of sauvignon blanc, when her life unravelled. While borrowing a book from the strict Catholic couple who raised her in Adelaide, Munkara discovered evidence that traced her origins to a riverbank in Arnhem Land. Her memoir charts her journey back to her homeland to reconnect with her birth family. It’s rare for a writer to bare herself like this, chronicling the ugly parts of her assimilated upbringing as well as the isolation and humiliation she encounters trying to return to her roots. Thankfully, Munkara’s raw humour balances out the heartbreak.
