THE ISLANDS

A novel about families, ambition and loss, and the immigrant's eternal struggle for settlement.

The 'sampo' is an indeterminate object of Finnish folk legend that grinds flour, salt and money. In the ancient epic poem, Kalevala, the coveted perpetual mill is lost to the sea, and is sought by all of Finland for its life-giving power. In the mid-twentieth century, Onni Saari arrives from Finnland at the Abrolhos Islands, off the west coast of Australia. He is soon hooked by the desolation and beauty of the reef, and the slivers of jutting coral onto which the crayfishers build their precarious camps. A novel in stories, The Islands binds together nine narratives from various perspectives. Through glimpses into the lives of the Saari family and the other Finns who form the small fishing community on Little Rat, the reader is immersed in the spectacular and sometimes brutal landscape of the Abrolhos, and in the internal landscapes of the central characters as they strive to attain what they need. The lives of this little known group of Australians take place in a landscape shadowed by the gothic wreck of the 'Batavia', and in the shadow of a yearning for the very different geography of the cold north. Small tragedies and immense joys befall the fishing families of Little Rat: Onni's wife Alva makes a perilous journey across rough seas with a tiny newborn baby, where, against all odds, she feels safe; their young daughter Hilda watches thoughtfully as a small boy tum- bles from a jetty and very nearly drowns; an old story of shipwreck and mutiny intrigues two adolescent boys; a mysterious and tortured fisherman rows into the eye of a storm; and Hilda, on the brink of womanhood, comes to know the cruelty and the ecstasy of desire, while distances expand between her and her migrant parents. Emily Brugman lives in Byron Bay. She is a regular contributor at the surfing magazine Tracks, and her fiction, poetry and playwriting has been published in the UTS Writers Anthology, Verity La and Tincture Journal. Emily is the Festival Administrator at Byron Bay Writers Festival.