Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe
About Mirandi Riwoe
Mirandi Riwoe is a Brisbane-based writer. Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella prize and her debut novel, She be Damned, was released in 2017. She has been shortlisted for Overland’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, the Josephine Ulrick Short Story Prize, the Luke Bitmead Bursary and the Stella Prize; and longlisted for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and the CWA (UK) Dagger Awards. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Review of Australian Fiction, Rex, Peril and Shibboleth and Other Stories, and she has received fellowships from the Queensland Literary Awards and Griffith Review. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies.
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About Stone Sky Gold Mountain
Family circumstances force siblings Ying and Lai Yue to flee their home in China to seek their fortunes in Australia. Life on the gold fields is hard, and they soon abandon the diggings and head to nearby Maytown. Once there, Lai Yue gets a job as a carrier on an overland expedition, while Ying finds work in a local store and strikes up a friendship with Meriem, a young white woman with her own troubled past. When a serious crime is committed, suspicion falls on all those who are considered outsiders. Evoking the rich, unfolding tapestry of Australian life in the late nineteenth century, Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a heartbreaking and universal story about the exiled and displaced, about those who encounter discrimination yet yearn for acceptance.
Judges' comments
Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a layered novel that transports us into the heat and chaos of the Palmer River goldfields of far north Queensland in the 1870s. Its three central characters, the Chinese siblings Ying and Lai Yue, and Meriem, the daughter of English settlers, are depicted with sensitivity and clear-eyed empathy.
The harshness of the goldfields is vividly recreated, contrasting the hopes and dreams of those like Ying and Lai Yue, who seek to restore their family’s fortunes in China, with the realities of violence and hunger.
The novel sheds light on a fascinating corner of history rarely illuminated in Australian literature. The historical detail is deftly woven into the narrative through the perspectives of the three characters, showing a depth of understanding of the period and its attitudes.
It is both intimate in its exploration of character and epic in its depiction of the enormous social and economic movement of people and resources into far north Queensland during the gold rush. Stone Sky Gold Mountain encompasses racism, snobbery, and sexual violence alongside moments of tenderness and connection in prose that is immediate, vivid and poignant.
Mirandi Riwoe’s skill at presenting diverse viewpoints in intricate detail has made her novel stand out in a very strong field.
