In the 21st century, after she has tripped over a tree root and finds herself in hospital, Granny Eddie talks to a white journalist and tells him that the whitefella-concocted history of the land is wrong, that she has the true story from the Old People.
Writing in Australian Book Review, critic Jeanine Leane noted that the novel "moves in a great concentric arc with many ripples, like those in the river that is central to the action; and which is an ancient, unbroken vein that pulses life from past to present to future in a continuous cycle."
She went on to say that the novel "is an accumulation of all times – a testimony to the continuation of Aboriginal storytelling, value systems, intellectualism, scientific and technological literacy, and understandings of time, non-human agency, and Country.
"[2] In The Newtown Review of Books Michael Jongen called it "an ambitious novel" and "an astounding read".
[3] After the novel's initial publication in Australia by University of Queensland Press in 2023,[1] it was reprinted by the same publisher in 2024.