The Spirit Lives recounts the author's struggle with the death of his young son and his subsequent journeying in search of stability and meaning. During his encounters with Christian monasticism, Balinese Hinduism, a variety of traditions in north India, Japanese Zen Buddhism, and Native Canadian religion, he experiences firsthand what Aboriginal people in Australia had been trying to teach him for more than a generation: The spirit lives. It sustains us. It moves us to our finest moments.
In the second edition of "Return to Eden," David H. Turner updates the current situation of the Aboriginal people of Amagalyuagba in northern Australia from 1988. He adds a new chapter on the politics of doing fieldwork in the Northern Territory in the pre-land rights era of Australian history. This study recounts the Aborigines own theoretical interpretation of their society and history and brings that interpretation to life in a journey with them through the sacred Landscape of Bickerton Island, Groote Eylandt, and the adjacent mainland. Through Turner's first visit to the people of this area in 1969, the book documents the current plight of these Aboriginal people under the threat of missionization, mining, and government interference and suggests possible ways out of their dilemma.
Afterlife Before Genesis is the final volume in a trilogy that began with Life Before Genesis and was followed by Return to Eden . Here David H. Turner focusses on what the Aborigines of the Groote Eylandt area of northern Australia take to be the foundations of their way of life, namely musical Forms. Their music, like their way of life, incarnates from «Nothing» as differences (songLines) which are «renounced» from «owners» to «non-owners» to connect rather than divide. This music is a complex polyphonic interplay of didjereedoo (their hollow log instrument) and voice which not only transcends but also heals. This the author documents by recounting how he learned to play the didjereedoo.