In this family saga place-names and events familiar to many readers, including Coogee, Leichhardt, Granville, the First and Second World Wars, the war in Vietnam, the Great Depression and the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, are all suddenly seen from the point of view of Aboriginal families. And it's not in any way an angry and retributive reversal of perspective. The story of the three generations of women is warm, funny, ironic, sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant-and a sense of anger at what war does to men, women and children builds only quietly in the background.

The story of the mother, Hazel, of the middle generation, is what binds the saga together. We see her as a happy child, gradually learning to protect her mother and herself from her father's shellshocked abuse when he comes home from WWI. Marrying a man so unconcerned about racial difference is a wonderful support to her, but as she becomes a mother herself, she is forced to confront the fact that, as an Aboriginal mother in a predominantly white society, she is suspect and may have her children taken away from her.

Through all the changes, though, her wonderful heritage of stories sustains her: she is a woman of Duck River and will always be nourished by the earth and the water. It is this underlying spiritual belief that ultimately makes Beyond Duck River such an inspiring novel