From the acclaimed author of the Miles Franklin long-listed The River Serpent (UWA) and the Barbara Jefferis Award shortlisted Benevolence, Compassion continues Julie Janson's emotional and intense literary exploration of the complex and dangerous lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s in colonial New South Wales, which she began in Benevolence as a counter narrative to colonial history in Australian literature.

Compassion is the dramatized life story of one of Julie Janson's ancestors who went on trial for stealing livestock in New South Wales, and it is an exciting and violent story of anti-colonial revenge and roaming adventure. A gripping fictive account of Aboriginal life in the 1800s, Compassion follows the life of Duringah, AKA Nell James, the outlaw daughter of the Darug hero of Benevolence, Muraging.