The Minstrels is the story of Gem and, to a lesser extent, her brother Will, who live on a farm that backs onto an area called The Minstrels. It’s an area of stunning natural beauty that has a long and chequered past for the township and the people who have lived there across generations. As children, Gem and Will’s love is all encompassing and slowly changes as family history and events play out. Ultimately, due to a combination of circumstances, Gem comes back to run the family farm and challenge the local community and government. Society is slowly disintegrating and she must make some fundamental decisions with a cast of lovable characters who come to depend on her.

Eva Hornung is best known for Dog Boy, for which she won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2010. The Minstrels is powerful and rich in scope and content – a unique story but in the style of Juice by Tim Winton or The Thinning by Inga Simpson, in that they share an apocalyptic environmental message. This was a surprise and real joy to read because at their heart these books, for me, have such a dark, foreboding feeling, but this novel had such a tender beauty in so many moments, that even with the devastation that overshadows the story, the overriding feeling was joy, particularly at the relationships Gem fosters and cultivates on the farm in the second half of the novel, and throughout at all the smaller details.

At its core, The Minstrels is a story of connection and the love of friends, family and the land. It is not without its tragedies, but ultimately it gives a beautiful insight into found families and kindness, especially the love Gem showed others and reaped in return.