The Yield: A Novel

By Tara June Winch

Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award and 2021 Kate Challis RAKA Award! 

"A beautifully written novel that puts language at the heart of remembering the past and understanding the present."—Kate Morton

“A groundbreaking novel for black and white Australia.”—Richard Flanagan, Man Booker Prize winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North

A young Australian woman searches for her grandfather's dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family's home and ancestral land in this exquisitely written, heartbreaking, yet hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering, and empowerment in the tradition of Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Harmon. 

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill. A member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, he has spent his adult life in Prosperous House and the town of Massacre Plains, a small enclave on the banks of the Murrumby River. Before he takes his last breath, Poppy is determined to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind.

After his passing, Poppy’s granddaughter, August, returns home from Europe, where she has lived the past ten years, to attend his burial. Her overwhelming grief is compounded by the pain, anger, and sadness of memory—of growing up in poverty before her mother’s incarceration, of the racism she and her people endured, of the mysterious disappearance of her sister when they were children; an event that has haunted her and changed her life. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends and honor Poppy and her family, she vows to save their land—a quest guided by the voice of her grandfather that leads into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.

Told in three masterfully woven narratives, The Yield is a celebration of language and an exploration of what makes a place "home." A story of a people and a culture dispossessed, it is also a joyful reminder of what once was and what endures—a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling, and identity, that offers hope for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063003484

Tara June Winch

Tara June Winch is the Wiradjuri author of two novels and a short story collection. For her first novel, Swallow the Air, she was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist and received mentorship from Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her second novel, The Yield, won Australia's highest accolade, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She was born in Australia in 1983 and currently lives in France with her family.

Reviews for The Yield

[caanderson-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story, great characters, great writing. I like how the book jumps from the past to the present in order meet the deadline. It tugs at your heart as you learn on the devastation brought on by colonization on native people.

[tandah_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Slow start however it turned into a wonderful deep read as three stories wove together to tell the story of a family and its community at Massacre Fields and its mysteries and discovery. It's about language, family, loss and belonging. Like most recent Australian First Nations history, it's also tragic, but the writing is elevated and beautiful.

[therebelprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Culture has no armies, does it?"

The Yield is superb. Three separate stories take place, connected in a thousand different ways. There's August, a young woman returning to Australia in the early 21st century after several years abroad, to a past she has consciously left behind. There's her dying grandfather, some time earlier, writing a dictionary of the forgotten words of his (Indigenous) people. And there's a 19th century missionary who finds himself the only defender of those same people against an unforgiving populace.

Winch's novel has much to recommend it. (My review is 4.5 stars, but in this case I'm bumping up rather than down due to the sheer force of the novel's compassion.) First, there is her writing style: clear, focused, intrigued by the most minute details, shifting the narrative voice in unison with its characters. The subtle intricacies of the novel deserve mention too, with the concepts from Poppy's dictionary resonating through both the past and present. August still holds out some tendrils of hope for a sister who went missing when they were children; Poppy, unbeknownst to her, seeks his own answers. Reverend Greenleaf attempts to be the saviour of a culture; to August and her family in the present day, he is equally villainous as those he fought against. The Reverend's awakening to the brutality against the Wiradjuri people in the 19th century reflects through Poppy's reminiscences of his awakening to his own culture in the 20th century, which is then reflected in August's attempts to salvage a little of that in the 21st. Winch's plurality of voices also leaves open the possibility of re-interpretation. For example, I don't think Greenleaf is as bad as August does, but then I bring my own biases to the text too.

At the heart of the book, Winch seems to be asking not how do we protect the artifacts of culture (words, letters, tools, much loved homes with chintzy decor) but how we protect the culture underneath? What obligations do each of us have as individuals to our broader clan? And how do we regain what has already been lost? A novel in which one-third of the book is an old man compiling a dictionary sounds inherently dull, but these sections radiate with warmth and heartbreak. I grew up in Wiradjuri country and my eyes lit up when I saw the map on the first page, excited to return to the dusty world of my youth. Winch captures it well, true, but she is also laying bare an entire culture that had existed alongside mine, in my culture's shadow, as it were, and this poignancy imbues every page.

(On a lighter note, the fact that the Australian Winch has lived in Europe for many years, and has an international writing presence, adds a humorous tone for me in her portrayal of some of the details. While the modern-day chapters of the novel are written with descriptive verisimilitude, Winch has to think of her international audience, and thus chooses to over-define such concepts as Aussie Rules, Vegemite, and Lip Smackers. It's a smart choice, and I think it will help protect The Yield against becoming dated. But as someone who grew up in the same time and place as August, I couldn't help but chortle at the narrator in these moments!)

Well worth it.