Salt Creek

Salt Creek is a novel that has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2016, longlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, and is the winner of the 2016 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction. It is written by Lucy Treloar, the winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region) and the 2013 Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.

Salt Creek introduces a capacious talent, as noted by The Australian. Some things collapse slowly, and cannot always be rebuilt, and even if rebuilt, they will never be as they were.

The story is set in Salt Creek in 1855, located in the remote, beautiful, yet inhospitable coastal region of the Coorong in the new province of South Australia. The area, just opened to graziers willing to chance their luck, becomes home to Stanton Finch and his large family, including fifteen-year-old Hester Finch.

Once wealthy political activists, the Finch family has fallen on hard times. Cut adrift from the polite society to which they were raised, Hester and her siblings forge connections where possible: with the few travellers along the nearby stock route - among them a young artist, Charles - and the Ngarrindjeri people they have dispossessed.

Over the years, an Aboriginal boy, Tully, initially a friend, becomes part of the family. Stanton's attempts to tame the harsh landscape bring ruin to the Ngarrindjeri people's homes and livelihoods, unleashing events that will tear the family apart. As Hester witnesses the destruction of the Ngarrindjeri's subtle culture and the ideals once held dear by her family, she begins to question what civilisation means. Was it for this life and this world that she was educated?

Praise for Salt Creek:

"This fine, accomplished novel is a respectful and unobtrusively beautiful homage to the Ngarrindjeri people," writes the Sydney Morning Herald.

"...Written with a profound respect for history: with an understanding that beyond a certain point, the past and its people are unknowable." -- Sydney Morning Herald