In 2020 I DNA matched with a first cousin living on the edge of the Australian outback whose ethnicity indicated Indigenous roots. Years of research followed (which you can read about in ‘The Mystery DNA Match’), resulting in Take Me Home, a work of literary fiction but inspired by the real lives of my grandma and the uncle I never knew I had.
Take Me Home tells a story which will break you and make you whole again.
It’s a story of identity, belonging, and the enduring pull of family. Following the lives of Edna and her son Norman who was taken from her and sent to Australia as a child migrant, Take Me Home weaves two timelines and continents within a circular narrative framework as each character struggles to find a place to call home.
Take Me Home is an immersive read with a strong sense of place, and recurring motifs provide emotional resonance throughout. It’s a sad read, and often a dark read, but I hope it’s also a beautiful and engrossing read; ultimately the characters' stories are life-affirming.
Take Me Home is currently undergoing a cultural sensitivity review with the Queensland Writers Centre.
Norman spends time with Indigenous communities across Australia and the novel includes First Nations characters. The review will ensure that these characters have a strong voice, and that the settings are authentic and sensitively portrayed.
Content warning
The story contains discriminatory language including racial and homophobic slurs which reflect the time the story is set but are not considered appropriate today. It contains themes which may be culturally sensitive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should also be aware this book contains the names of deceased persons.
Extracts from the book
“He could broadly categorise his life into ‘before’ and ‘after’, but there were grey areas too. Memories were thin, like wisps of mist, split-second flashbacks that rippled outwards, creating soft suggestions of time and place.”
“The pain of losing Olive never left her, its currents simply joined her other sorrows, tributaries which would eventually spill into an expansive sea whose tides would visit her from time to time, as familiar to her as hunger or thirst.”
“He continued his wanderings, deeper, further, mostly moving south. Some of his journeys took him through plains so flat and bright that when it rained, and the great salt lakes spilled over the perimeters, he couldn’t tell where the horizons started and the skies ended”.
“She had the sense that she was surrounded by all the ancestors who came before her - her mother, her grandmother and all the great grandmothers before that - and that they too were proud, that the fight, and their fight too, had been worth it. However tough their lives had been, however much they had been pushed and shoved and tripped, they had managed to stay upright, just long enough to pass that baton forward. And it was not a baton of trauma or shame, but of life, and they rose around her now like mountains emerging from a mist”.
“If he’d known that she would be in his future, his past might’ve been easier to bear. That his lowest moments would one day just be anecdotes, stories he’d be telling, and she’d be there to offer comfort. She always listened to him, validating his feelings about the bad things that happened, in her uncomplicated way, helping him understand that none of it had been his fault. Aww mate, that’s bloody awful, or you carried on, despite it all, good on’ya, or sometimes simply dickheads.”
“She looked again towards the docks, this time at the swarms of passengers departing and embarking and was reminded again of the world as a seedhead in an endless breeze, and how fortunate for her it was that so many of its people from far-flung lands had resettled in her path. She thought about how it would all continue long after she was gone, the world would keep on turning with or without her in it, its winds stirring change as they had done for hundreds of thousands of years. She thought about the apple seeds planted by the Italian prisoner of war; how many of them had taken root, how many shoots had found the light, how many trees now bore blossom.”
“The day after Daphne was admitted to hospital, when it was the beginning of the end, there was a series of freak thunderstorms, including a once-in-a-lifetime tropical cyclone that was classed as a natural disaster. The entire sky turned dark grey in the middle of the afternoon, like a spontaneous dusk, like someone had kidnapped the sun. A wide shelf of solid cloud, the likes of which he’d never seen, edged into the city, bringing with it hail stones the size of tennis balls and flash floods. The whole event lasted only an hour or so, but it carried a fury more violent than he’d ever witnessed, even in wild desert storms. Of course it wasn’t linked to her rapid deterioration, but the storm was so localised, its timing so uncanny, that he saw it as the earth’s rage, a warning of what would happen if she was taken away”.
Endorsements
I have read your pages and this promises to be an ambitious and heartwrenching narrative
- Lucy Morris, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown
Much of the prose is exquisite. The description of a wedding’s spent confetti as “an early lesson in the transitory nature of joy” is one example. Many thanks Katie for being such an enervating guest and sharing Take Me Home with our greatest turn out in our 8 year history. We wish you every success with Take Me Home.
- Stuart Sheach, Coordinator of Folkestone Book GroupLyrical, almost poetic prose in places. The author utilises similes and personification to build a rich, poetic scene. It is clear this author has a controlled writing style, often using sentences that contain run-on clauses which build a solid sense of atmosphere. She brings up many themes within the first twenty pages, with great depth to explore as the story progresses.
- Editorial team, Pynewood Press