'When times were difficult, Cynthia Reed Nolan ‘drew the veil’. Born in Evandale in 1908, the youngest of six children, Cynthia always sought distance. From an early age, like siblings Margaret and John, she longed to escape from Tasmania. Oddly, however, this was not what John Reed expected of her. Such anomalies make this biography, which foregrounds her life before she became Cynthia Nolan, particularly interesting. Drawing on newly available correspondence, it portrays a sensitive, ironic woman previously overshadowed by more famous contemporaries.'
(Introduction)