From the author of A Different Sort of Real, shortlisted in the 2002 CBC Awards
The year is 1931. Twelve-year-old Isa and her younger siblings, Johnno, Rosie and Billy, live with their mother, Ann Wyatt. Their father is away building the Great Ocean Road, for which his family receives food parcels every week.
Ann is making ends meet by working as a cleaner, the children do what they can by delivering papers, collecting bottles and taking in washing. The family is just coping.
Then one day, while working, Ann is knocked unconscious and taken to hospital, where she is diagnosed with TB. She is to stay in hospital for a long time, and her husband, out on a road gang, cannot be contacted. The only thing left is for the children to be split up and placed in orphanages, but Isa will not have that. She evades the people trying to help them by inventing an “Auntie Kate”, who she says is waiting for them in Colac.
And so, with only the bare essentials packed into a pram, the children set off on a train ride to Colac and then a long walk in search of their father.
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Kerry Greenwood is a lawyer who works part-time in court and spends the rest of her time writing. She lives in Melbourne. She is not married and has no children, but lives in a run-down house with a wizard. Her previous books include A Different Sort of Real, Phryne Fisher, Whale Road and Cave Rats.