Faith and Evelyn are close friends, neighbours, and single mothers of Luke and of Mitch – and both bear the scars of the trauma of colonisation and the Stolen Generations. When Faith dies unexpectedly, Luke’s childhood in Sydney is severed into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ and a chain of catastrophic events is unleashed that will alter the course of his life. Navigating the upheaval of a broken foster system (that serves as a pipeline to poverty and incarceration in ‘juvie’), The Leaves is a meditation on loss, female friendship, motherhood and the role of the state. Luke’s journey exposes the aftermath of colonisation, as the nature of punishment, historical trauma and healing are examined. In doing so, the novel reveals the cruelty and futility of the youth detention system, and the violence of the law itself. Through the pursuit of unattainable justice for Luke, The Leaves raises larger questions about a society that is yet to take responsibility for its own historical crimes.