AustLit

'A Gradual Grace is Christina’s third memoir. In the first, This Place You Know, she tells the story of her childhood on an outback sheep station, told in her mother’s voice and her own voice and published by Ginninderra Press in 2019. The second, A Practice of Loss, tells the story of the breakdown of her marriage and the abduction of her three young daughters by their father. A Gradual Grace completes the trilogy.' (Publication summary)

'At twenty, Anna married an ambitious computer scientist. Now, twelve years later, they have three young daughters. Yet something vital is missing. He is more away than at home, and she dreams of an equal love. But she dreads the price of breaking free. Within a year, the marriage shatters and her children are abducted overseas. In the vengeful shadow of their father's blame, how can she nurture and protect those who were the crown and comfort of her life? The true-life story of a desperate choice and its heart-breaking yet redemptive consequences for Anna and her daughters. '(Publication summary)

'Traumata, by Meera Atkinson, is an informed and passionate critique of patriarchy in a braided narrative, where the author’s life story is the weft woven through the warp (the formative structure) of patriarchal society. Atkinson’s weaving of her life story with theory that interprets patriarchy and its forms and deformities is powerful, for every experience and incident she relates is material for illuminating the traumatising influence of patriarchy; hence the plural title. Her self-exposure is searching, nakedly honest and compelling, but it is always in service of her intent, which is to create a three-dimensional picture of the society we are born into, deeply and generationally wounded by the institutionalised, polyphonic, medusa-headed curse of patriarchy. Atkinson has achieved this searching picture of the wounded culture into which we are born with great skill and a remarkable command of the many discourses that inform this deconstruction of ‘traumarchy,’ her word for the traumata caused by patriarchy.' (Introduction)

'Hay, New South Wales, 1923. Martha, a classics scholar from the coast, comes to teach in a man's town in the outback. She falls in love with Henry, a local man, and they find their dream place on the river where they raise a family and breed a flock of sheep with fine wool. The unforgiving climate erodes their dreams. When Henry leaves, Martha takes on the outside work and learns to drive. Seven-year-old Anna is her main helper and confidante. Sustained by their shared love of this stark and beautiful country with its endless skies, red plains and silvery saltbush, mother and daughter strive - against all odds - to look after livestock and land and keep the farm going. But when Anna is away at boarding school, the place is lost forever.'   (Publication summary)