At the heart of this long and absorbing novel is the Great Serpent which is how the Native Australian Brippoki sees the River Thames. Bought to Victorian London as part of a cricket team, he has another motive for being here, to research the life of a man transported to Australia nearly 80 years earlier. There is marvellous counterpointing of Aboriginal life against the seething, crowded and dirty world of London in the 1860’s, The length of the novel gives Ed Hillyer the space to fill out historical detail creating a very strong sense of time and place.
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| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
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Closing date: 02/08/2026
May 1868 - an Aboriginal Australian cricket team begins a tour of England. One of the players is on a quest to explore his Truth, or Dreaming. Sarah Larkin's quiet routine, divided between her father's sick room and the British Library, takes on a completely new aspect when King Cole, aka Brippoki, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, requesting her help. A curious friendship develops as together they research the fate and fortune of Joseph Druce, a convicted felon, transported to New South Wales nearly eighty years earlier: sneak thief, drunkard, cattle rustler, Royal Navy deserter - and quite possibly a murderer. From Lord's cricket ground to the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich and the muddy banks of the River Thames - the Great Serpent coiled at the heart of his London Dreaming - diabolical spirits rage in pursuit of the hapless Aborigine. His health and sanity unravelling, Brippoki is a man out of place, and running out of time. In this powerful debut novel, Ed Hillyer has created an epic brimming with memorable characters and historical intrigue, and etched with documentary detail that brings both Regency and Victorian London vividly to life. Sources: The novel takes as its starting point the historical British tour of any Australian cricket team, the Aboriginal Australian Eleven. 'The Life of a Greenwich Pensioner' by Joseph Druce (1777-1819), written in the year of his death, is an unpublished manuscript now kept in the Mitchell Library, New South Wales, Australia. The Aboriginal cricketer, Bripumyarrimin, or 'Brippoki', is buried in Meath Gardens, Bethnal Green, London. Other characters and events in the novel are entirely fictitious.
The Clay Dreaming features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
The Clay Dreaming is available in Paperback
The Clay Dreaming was written by Ed Hillyer and published by Myriad Editions
The Clay Dreaming has 542 pages
