- The Minstrels is a pool surrounded by cliffs in a gorge, near the town of Bolton in regional Australia. Drought is a frequent problem, as are heavy rains and floods, and plagues.
- A young boy Will and his younger sister Gem live with their parents on a farm.
- Will was troubling. He filled his mother with 'a vague misery, a vague terror'. Gem was also difficult. Her habit was to resist. She screeched and screamed and bit. ‘..a difficult, dirty girl’. But she loved machines, as did her father.
- They were from the Thurstons lineage, who were known for being smart. They were in universities, professions and government. Gem was that kind. The residents of Bolton on the other hand were basics - anti immigration and anti 'Abos' (familiar?) who they called ‘hopeless’. Gem was offended. It made her aspire to active disobedience and transgression. There are complicated sexual relationships in Bolton, especially between the hight school students.
- Gem was a brilliant university student. She won a prize for her Honours thesis and a scholarship for doctoral studies. But she withdrew from her doctorate after being disillusioned.
- She now owns her deceased family's property. She buys lots of new equipment and supplies, enabling her to run cattle and sheep and harvest hay crops. She stays well away from Bolton, where she is treated as an outsider. Something she relishes.
- Then the mining process of fracking was about to happen to so many areas in Australia. Gem led the resistance in Bolton, harassing politicians and creating media storms. She was now seen as a natural leader in the whole district.
- This is when a very important character enters her life and becomes central to the novel's significance. He was Uncle Jim, the local Indigenous leader. He wanted access to her property. His tribe and their language become rather intrusive. And he insists she throw back into the lands the Aboriginal artifacts she's collected all her life. But he teaches her their language. The novel now becomes on so many levels an Indigenous story. Their presence 'made it appear more than a farm, more than soil and fields and trees, more than seasonal crops…much more than ownership and land taxes.’ The Bolton pub crew hated that.
- Over the next two decades Jim helps her write a series of three hundred Ngawarla language books.
- Again Hornung introduces a new character who changes the shape of the story significantly. Gem's nephew Benjamin is invited to stay with her. She likes him and he helps her with the farm work.
- Hornung also throws in a few more subplots presumably to give more colour to the novel at this point. Gem finds a stray horse on her property one morning, gifted by an unknown owner. This turns into an annual pony festival/celebration which happens on her farm, which frankly I found completely meaningless. (And I think Gem does too!)
- Another subplot: the non-English speaking Elena, a resident with her family on the farm, is pregnant and has contractions for far too long. Gem helps, guided by Elena who is a medical specialist, and the baby is successfully delivered. But after a while the family disappears.
- How are all these incidents connected? They’re not. We're a reading a bio. Well researched and full of detail, but just informative about Gem's rich and varied life.
- By now Gem and Uncle Jim are suffering the aging process. He dies and all the Aunties, nieces and nephews come to console her and bury him.
- Benjamin also returns, bringing with him an unrelated five year old girl called Memory. She's an absolute delight.
- The novel ends very dramatically. It's the End of Times: she decides to stay on the farm, against Benjamin's and Memory's urgings. They themselves rush to leave. Her home is utterly destroyed by the elements and the severe aggression of wild nature. She walks to Bolton to see what was happening and finds it deserted and in ruins. The power was down and all the residents had left.
- Despite the distracting side stories, Hornung has written a brilliant novel. As in her two previous novels the prose is powerful, poetic, rich, delicious and brimming with colour and movement, and invigorating to read. Her depiction of her characters and all the incidents involving them is detailed and convincing. She is easily one of the best novelists of our age and a national treasure.
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