Conway, Jill Ker The Road from Coorain ISBN 13: 9780679724360

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9780679724360: The Road from Coorain
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In a memoir that pierces and delights us, Jill Ker Conway tells the story of her astonishing journey into adulthood—a journey that would ultimately span immense distances and encompass worlds, ideas, and ways of life that seem a century apart.

She was seven before she ever saw another girl child. At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slide—bereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled her—into depression and dependency.

We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planet—the suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessons—Jill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self.

Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to place—or to a dream—can at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free.

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From the Back Cover:
"Sheer delight." --Washington Post

"A small masterpiece of scene, memory and very stylish English. I've been several times to Australia; this book was the most rewarding journey of all." --John Kenneth Galbraith
About the Author:
Jill Ker Conway is a noted historian, specializing in the experience of women in America, and was the first woman president of Smith College.

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  • PublisherVintage
  • Publication date1990
  • ISBN 10 0679724362
  • ISBN 13 9780679724360
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages238
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780394574561: The Road From Coorain

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780394574561
Publisher: Knopf, 1989
Hardcover

  • 9780749398941: The Road From Coorain

    Vintage, 1992
    Softcover

  • 9780816152049: The Road from Coorain: Recollections of a Harsh and Beautiful Journey to Adulthood (G K Hall Large Print Book Series)

    G K Ha..., 1991
    Hardcover

  • 9780749303600: Road From Coorain

    Mandarin, 1990
    Softcover

  • 9780855615482: THE ROAD FROM COORAIN : An Australian Memoir

    Willia..., 1993
    Hardcover

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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In a memoir that pierces and delights us, Jill Ker Conway tells the story of her astonishing journey into adulthooda journey that would ultimately span immense distances and encompass worlds, ideas, and ways of life that seem a century apart. She was seven before she ever saw another girl child. At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slidebereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled herinto depression and dependency. We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planetthe suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessonsJill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self. Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to placeor to a dreamcan at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free. A woman of intellect and ambition describes growing up on an Australian ranch, coping with her father's death and her mother's depression, her intellectual awakening at the university, and her path to becoming Smith College's first woman president. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780679724360

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