The Yield: A Novel

Poppy begins with guradyi, gudyi, guraadyi—medicine man, priest, conjurer. He says that his people’s practices were lost and that the only decent white priest he has heard of is Greenleaf. He learned some of the lost practices of the priests having to do with plants from his ancestors. He talks about his people losing their culture due to the Christian missionaries and schools and about how hard times have hit Massacre Plains. He recounts a folktale he learned from his ancestors of forbidden and tragic love and the story of the time he and Elsie hit a koala while driving. He talks about the mine and wonders if the reason he and the other Indigenous people of the land still upset white men so much is because they didn’t all die out when the white men believed they were supposed to.

August attends the funeral for Poppy. After Elsie throws Poppy’s ashes on the bonfire, the world seems to stop. A brolga, one of the birds Poppy has talked about in his dictionary, appears. August feels that she recognizes Jedda in the bird. She sees their old beds and their recorded messages for Princess Diana. August wonders why she is seeing this, thinking that she went to England and stopped eating for Jedda’s memory, trying to fulfill their childhood dreams and stay a little girl forever.