NNELS Upgrade

Part memoir, part observation. As a young woman Nikki Gemmell wanted to travel and see the world; adventure lay in running away from Australia, where she had grown up. But at 40, after 12 wonderful years in London with her husband and 3 children, she longs to connect with her past to show her children where their parents came from. But can you really go home again? With characteristic candour Nikki Gemmell looks at what it means to be Australian - in the past and right now.

Journalist Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family. When the money ran out, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town Rex had tried to escape.

Biography of New Zealand theologian Lloyd Geering [1918-]