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.

BOOK REVIEW: The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally

I think I must be the only one in my demographic who has not seen Schindler’s List and I feel kind of guilty about that. The author, Thomas Keneally, has a new book, The Dickens Boy, so with an odd sort of logic, I added that to my TBR list instead.

This is a gem of a historical novel. 

Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (called Plorn) is the youngest (10th) child of Charles and Catherine

Dickens. He is, or believes himself to be, rather a disappointment to the great man. Not only did he do poorly at school, but also – and this is worse – he has never read any of his father’s books. He knows his father is practically worshiped the world over. He’s used to it. Yet it bewilders him all the same.

At sixteen, he finds himself shipped off to Australia. His older brother Alfred, who also failed to live up to expectations, preceded him there a few years earlier. Plorn is desperate to show his father that he is good for something, that he can apply himself.

Australia is a huge place. And so, while he does cross paths with Alfred, Plorn is not settled in the same region. Rather, he’s sent out to Momba to work for sheep farmers (massively large scale sheep farmers), the Bonney brothers. There, Plorn not only applies himself but thrives.

The Dickens Boy is a coming-of-age story, set in the 1860s Australian Outback. It showcases the hard, isolated lives of the men who settle there, the offenses of British colonialism, and the workings on the psyche of being the son of a man universally revered. Even in the Outback, Plorn cannot escape his father’s shadow. While the Dickens name brings perks, it also causes Plorn a great deal of anxiety. He has none of his father’s talent. Yet he is about to discover he has talents of his own.

As part of the growing up process, Plorn begins his own tentative exploration of male-female relations. He does this largely through reading and imagination since there are very few “acceptable” women in the Outback. But the process allows him to question his father’s abandonment of his mother and relationship with a young Irish actress. The great man was, perhaps, not so great after all.

The novel is superbly crafted. Details of daily life are riveting. The characters are fully realized. Plorn’s growth from a naive, insecure youth to a competent young man of increasing confidence is poignant and insightful. The novel is also shot through with clever humor. 

The book not only tells the story of this fascinating young man in a complex setting, but also provides insights into the life of Charles Dickens. Highly recommended.

BOOK REVIEW: Daughter of Australia by Harmony Verna

I’ve been waiting for this one! Daughter of Australia by Harmony Verna is an epic historical novel set in Australia in the early twentieth century.

Leonora is orphaned at a very young age. Her earliest memory is being abandoned by her father in the baking heat of the desert. If not for the fortuitous passage of a Good Samaritan (a one-time miner, now laboring wherever he can find work), Leonora would never have survived. She is sent to an orphanage to be brought up by a gentle priest who is fighting his own demons.

At the orphanage, she makes one friend, a boy named James who has been there since infancy. James can’t abide cruelty and when he sees the other children mistreating Leonora, he takes her under his wing.

The orphanage is far from idyllic, but it’s much better than what life has in store. James is discovered by an aunt who comes from Ireland to claim him. A sturdy, strong, patient boy, James is set to hard labor in the unforgiving Australian farmland. Leonora is adopted by a wealthy American couple and is moved to the United States. Although provided with every material comfort, Leonora is denied any semblance of warmth. Her life is controlled every minute by a woman who seems bent on wringing any sense of self from Leonora. Perhaps the woman’s cruelest action is to coerce Leonora into marrying a wealthy, cruel man whom Leonora could never love.

The lives of these two protagonists is about as bitterly unhappy as two people could be. But they are resilient.

Leonora’s husband’s job takes them to Australia where she blossoms, finding strength as she rediscovers who she is. Fate brings James back into her life, offering hope to them both.

This is a lush love story set against the backdrop of a harshly beautiful frontier. The struggles of the characters are heart-breaking and you’ll find yourself rooting for goodness to triumph over cruelty.