BOOK REVIEW: To Carve Identity by Susan Steggall

To Carve Identity by Susan Steggall is the story of a resilient, determined sculptress with feet in both Scotland and Australia, who struggles to find work/life balance in the post WWII years.

Ellie Gilmartin had a difficult youth, yet manages to make a start as a sculptress in Glasgow. While ferreting out painful family secrets in Australia, she meets Jim Blackwood, a solicitor, who helps her cope with what she learned, but their budding relationship is put on pause when she returns home.

Back in Glasgow, she gets back to her artist’s life, missing Jim and wondering if there might be a future with him, when he appears at her studio and asks her to marry him. 

Jim has his own troubled past. He’d been in the Australian army during WWII, was captured, and suffered as a POW in New Guinea. Now, he is trying to lay his own demons to rest by helping other traumatized veterans, a tactic that is only partly successful.

Ellie and Jim enjoy an enchanted honeymoon period, deepening their love for and understanding of one another. They intend to return to Australia one day, but that day comes sooner than they’d anticipated when Jim’s father falls ill.

The story shifts to Australia, where the pregnant Ellie must learn how to be a wife and mother while following her passion for art away from the supportive environment of Glasgow and London. There are family obstacles, health crises, and the push-and-pull of world events, but Ellie perseveres.

To Carve Identity succeeds beautifully in immersing the reader in the modern art of the time, while also following the life of a woman who, though she loves, cherishes, and supports her husband, children, and friends, nevertheless refuses to give up her artistic career.