Ten years later Billy is alone in a hospital, recovering from gruesome wounds of mysterious origin. Protecting him from the prying of the doctors, who believe him a dangerous schizophrenic responsible for the mad beating of a man on a train, is Cecily, an aboriginal nurse, and in her Billy finds an unlikely ally as he struggles to piece himself back together. For it is Cecily who understands what his wounds signify, even if she has never seen them on a white man before. Shifting between his hospital stay and the childhood that lead him there, The Voices unfolds into a mesmerizing exploration of the relationship between a man, the land he loves, and the spirits of the country, struggling to be heard before it is too late. With her haunting and psychologically complex tale of one boy who has internalized the trauma and the schisms of his land and its history, Elderkin boldly exposes the long and forceful arm of institutionalized injustice, and the inescapable hold of collective memory. The Voices is an extraordinary accomplishment.