The Australian Women's Weekly

Reading Room

Safe Haven by Shankari

Chandran, Ultimo Press

We begin with an emergency call: “Help us, please. We’re sinking. Our boat is sinking. We’re coming to Australia … There are holes, leaks everywhere … Please, there are children. So many children.”

In the following chapter a man is staring down from the top of an escarpment on the beach below. “Last week the sand was littered with the swollen bodies of men, women and children,” we are told. He stood ankle deep in the warm ocean water. “At his feet, the arm of a face-down child moved with the ebb and flow of the tide, hitting his ankle in time with the rhythms of a distant, ancient moon.”

Author Shankari Chandran immediately draws us into a familiar scene, the horror of refugees perishing on our shores. Just that image haunts – who are these people? This is a fearless novel that reaches into your heart with evocative prose and beautifully drawn characters. It’s also a page-turner.

Tamil asylum seeker Fina was one of the lucky ones. She survived the journey and is ultimately resettled in the town of Hastings, where she devotes herself to helping those who are still held in Port Camden, the remote island detention centre. She finds her place in a warm community and begins to rebuild

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