‘‘It was mythologised that I was going to do well and then I just couldn’t,’’ she says.

All that time,the story ofThe Yieldwas unyielding. Winch knew she wanted to write about language after giving characters Wiradjuri words inSwallow the Air, but the story was a shapeshifter for which she couldn't find the right novelistic form. It wasn't writing block – Winch still wrote consistently – it just never felt right. Yet the story ofThe Yield clung to her. Winch says her short-story collectionAfter the Carnage,published in 2016,was a product of her frustration. The sentences in the collection were drawn from the would-be novel that haunted her imagination for a decade.

‘‘I think I should write books that don't completely rip my heart out. I think I’ll have a longer life,’’ Winch says.

The 35-year-old is on the phone from France,where she lives with her French husband and Lila in the region of Loire-Atlantique,about two hours by train from Paris.

As part of the Rolex prize,Winch moved to Africa when Lila was three and then moved between Nigeria,New York and Australia for three years. In 2011 she moved to Paris,and has lived in the countryside for the past four years. She has a garden of Australian natives,full of the wafting scent of eucalyptus trees and splashes of the colour of bottlebrushes.

‘‘It’s like I’m still in Australia,which makes it bearable to be so far away because it is unbearable in so many ways,’’ Winch says.

I think I should write books where it doesn't completely rip my heart out. I think I’ll have a longer life.

Winch had previously lived in Paris,but she left the capital with a desire for more land and a lower cost of living. In her new home,for the first time,she has her own space to write – an attic currently scattered with research and papers fromThe Yield. It's a space that gives structure to her day and legitimacy to her art after years of working on kitchen benches cluttered with dirty dishes. Winch credits having a room of her own for helping her reach a breakthrough withThe Yield; it allowed the fog to lift to reveal a clear path for the story.

AndThe Yield is about stories – those we tell ourselves,those that are told about us,those that disempower and help us survive. And it's about language,its magical ability to capture a spirit,reveal a culture and allow us to revisit the past. The novel follows August Gondiwindi as she returns for the funeral of her much-loved grandfather,Albert ‘‘Poppy’’ Gondiwindi,to her home in the fictional Australian town of Massacre Plains. Approaching his death,the strong and generous Poppy,whose voice was based on Winch's own grandfather and father,has been quietly compiling a dictionary of Wiradjuri words,‘‘taking pen to paper to pass on everything that was ever remembered’’.

The language of the Wiradjuri people was once believed to be extinct. Winch drew extensively on the work of Stan Grant snr and John Rudder,who have published a Wiradjuri dictionary and are part of a wider movement to reclaim Indigenous languages,which she first discovered while writing Swallow the Air.

‘‘That dictionary was so important to me. It just stuck with me,that doorway to the past and the fact that language is not bound to time. It’s incredible. My attachment was that I needed to write a book about the importance of language.’’

Wouldn't it be great,Winch ponders,if every Australian knew how to say hello in the Indigenous language of their area? If young students could learn the basics of a local language,not for any practical purpose but as a sign of respect and as a way of better understanding a culture and history.

‘‘When engaging with Indigenous languages,it is a way of time travel. I really do believe that. When you try to roll those words around in your mouth – there’s something guttural and it’s something that speaks to your soul and opens your mind and soul,’’ Winch says.

‘‘I feel like through language you can have this renewed connection to country. Everyone can,everyone who learns it.’’

InThe Yield,Poppy's dictionary entries tell his and his family's story,one of white silencing and dispossession of Indigenous people,and also one about endurance. The acts of violence and the missions and children's homes in the novel are based on real events and places. It is challenging and upsetting work,Winch says,to face a brutal past but it is necessary work for all Australians.

‘‘People might read this book and absolutely hate it,or roll their eyes at it. But to be unmoved by it,to neither hate nor love it,would be the worst thing. If it doesn’t mean anything to anyone,’’ she says.

Winch has recently had to endure heartbreak away from the page. Her much loved older brother,Billy Martin,collapsed and died while volunteering for the State Emergency Service in Wollongong in December. He was 39 and a father. Winch named a character after him inSwallow the Air. Billy was so chuffed,Winch says,and he found it hilarious that the novel was studied in high schools,as both he and Winch were dropouts. Painfully,The Yield also features the story of a missing sibling.

Winch has now turned her attention to a new book,a commercial novel about grief. It's thankfully so far been less heart-wrenching and more therapeutic than writing her second novel. It doesn't make her cry,she says,while re-readingThe Yield still does. But grief takes its own toll,every single day.

‘‘Some days you can’t function. It’s just a natural part of grief. And then sometimes you just have to get your shit together and be brave for yourself and your family. It's what my brother would have wanted. He would have wanted me to get my shit together and keep working.’’

Tara June Winch is a guest at Melbourne Writers Festival,August 30-September 8.mwf.com.au

The Yield is published by Hamish Hamilton at $32.99.