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Jan 13, 2018diannehildebrand rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Absolutely beautiful book, although very sad in places. An autobiography of Jill Ker Conway - the first 25 years of her life growing up in Australia. She later became the first female president of Smith College. The best biography I've read in years. She expresses her thoughts and feelings in exactly the right way for each age, and when she diverges from that she lets us know - i.e. "I didn't realize until much later that..." A fascinating account of life on a sheep station and the terrible costs of extended drought. I had read about the most recent Australian drought in the newspapers and seen the pictures, but it never really came home for me what that meant until I read about it from this family's perspective. There is also keen insight (Conway is a sociologist/historian) as to the Australian national character and what it meant to become a woman intellectual in the 1950s. I highly, highly recommend this book.