Author(s): Tracey Lien

Contemporary Fiction

1996 - Cabramatta, Sydney. 'Just let him go.' Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends, in a neighbourhood growing more unpredictable by the day. That night, Denny - optimistic, guileless, valedictorian Denny - is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, an indifferent police force, and the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history. Returning home to Cabramatta for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother's case: several people were present at Denny's murder, but each bystander claims to have seen nothing and they are all staying silent. Ky sets aside her grief and determines to track down the witnesses herself. Peeling back the layers of the place that shaped her, Ky confronts the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died - she finds that their silence began well before that fateful night, and so much has been left unsaid about colonialism, the war in Vietnam, and the choices everyone has made to survive.