Dust Off the Bones

“Dispersal” is a euphemism used in Australia to mean the massacre of Indigenous people. In the prologue of this historical novel, two missionaries discover the aftermath of the dispersal of a hundred Kurrong Australians. One of them, Reverend Bean, tells a judge that he saw a crater filled with bodies of people who were mutilated and then burnt. The story then turns to young Billy and Tommy McBride, brothers who survived the murder of their family and are still haunted by the trauma. Years afterward, Tommy and his friend Arthur are charged with robbery and murder, so they run west. Tommy changes his name, and they eventually buy a plot of land and set up a cattle station. Back home, Billy marries a wealthy widow and becomes very successful. He still feels dissatisfied despite his material comforts, dutiful wife, and several children, and he wants to find his brother. Seeking to make amends for past misdeeds, he reawakens the case of the Kurrong massacre and the notorious chief inspector Edmund Noone, who led the massacre by the Native Police (Aboriginal troops under white officers meant to suppress Aboriginal resistance).