Jesustown
Reviewed By Ian Banks July 18, 2022
Author Paul Daley
Distributor: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760529789
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Release Date: July 2022
Website: https://www.allenandunwin.com
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Patrick Remark is at a turning in his life. His marriage has finally collapsed, his lover is haunting him and the decision to return to Australia, to his birthplace of Jesustown to write the story of the town and his grandfather’s influence over the settlement, seems to be the next place to go.
And so begins what is the story of a story, which in many ways, is one familiar to the many indigenous peoples of Australia, wrapped in a body of factual fiction, which throws a very bright light on the ‘white washing’ of history to make it more palatable; to try and absolve the blame of righteous and often murderous meddling carried out by so many, under the guise of helping the natives.
Patrick returns to Jesustown fully expecting the documentation of his grandfather and fathers work to be a bit more advanced than it is. It is not advanced at all as the notes and tapes are still in boxes in the shed. His father is none to happy to see him and old scars, battle lines and past conflict, as he discovers, are still alive and thriving.
As he slowly works his way through the boxes of papers and listens to the oral history held by the tapes, he is faced with some seriously unpalatable truths as far as the history of his family is concerned and the part his grandfather played in the devastation of the peoples of the small mission settlement of Jesustown, prior to World War I.
Paul Daley looks at the issues of skeletal theft, cultural amnesia and the self-delusional orbit created by a delusional man, his grandfather ‘Renny’, as he sets himself up as an untrained ‘anthropologist’, there to save the natives from themselves.
His legacy, a screwed up family, a devastated community and pile of boxes containing ‘history’ which force Patrick, already a man with some serious issues in his life, to face the reality of what and who he is and has become.
Powerful, captivating and very well worth reading Jesustown will resonate with many and remain with the reader for a long time. Although Paul Daley goes to great lengths to state clearly this is a work of fiction, for many born in the 1940’s and 1950’s when ‘ missionary’s’ in Australia were still a very large part of many indigenous settlements, there is a chilling ‘truth’ to the story.