Shirley Walker (1)

Shirley Walker wrote this book as a memoir of her mother-in-law's Jessie's life. There are only 11 LT members who have this book, which really surprised me and is a real shame - it's a very moving story about World War One's devastating impact on one Australian family, and I'd love to see it have more readers.

Jessie Walker was born in 1899 in northern New South Wales, where her parents Tom and Janet farmed sugar cane. Janet's family emigrated to Australia when the Scottish Highlanders were thrown out, and Tom came from Somerset in England. Jessie ended up marrying Eddie, one of three boys born to Harry and Margaret. Harry's Dad emigrated from Sweden and married Margaret, who was Irish. She died of tyhoid fever and left Harry with three kids he couldn't look after - so he left them at the railway station with nuns from the orphanage. Eddie never forgave him. Janet and Tom ended up having 12 kids (I think - I lost track!) and Joe, the eldest and Jessie's best friend, went off to the war. So did Eddie and his two brothers. We follow them through to the late 1950s. There's lots in here about Gallipoli, the Western Front, and later in WW2 the terrible Kokoda Track battle in New Guinea. And you get a really strong sense of how isolated Australia was from the action in World War One, and how the boys left seeking adventure and all who went found futility and despair instead.

The cover picture shows Eddie just before he went to fight in the Australian Imperial Forces. I gave it four stars - I would have loved to have seen Jessie's paintings, which structure the story quite a lot, and I was a little disappointed at the end to read that a couple of people are invented - I like my non-fiction to be non-fiction! (They fitted well into the story, and I think it was just that the author had a gap about Jessie's working life that she needed to fill, but still.)… (mer)