Cirrus@Austlit

'As a young unmarried mother in the 1960s, Maureen faces stifling disapproval and condemnation from mainstream society. Desperate to create a new life for herself and her baby, she rekindles an old romance and moves to South Africa under Apartheid.

'But her precarious journey to Africa’s Eden is not the paradise she anticipated. Cultures smash against each other, family relationships are strained, there is death and despair, violence and injustice. But there is also humour, fun, family and friendship, as Maureen has to decide where her future lies. Is it in Africa or back home in distant Eden, in her Australian homeland?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Pregnant, abandoned and homeless, Maureen battles to survive a Swedish winter until help arrives in the form of a mysterious woman with a veiled past. With the prospect of being deported, Maureen learns who her real friends are, especially when she faces investigations due to her links to a suspected criminal.

'Meanwhile in Australia, Maureen’s family is scrambling to support her when the health of her unscrupulous father declines and he depends on the clever intervention of his estranged family members to salvage both his dignity and finances.

'In this engaging, rollicking yet poignant sequel to Lillian’s Eden, we see Maureen’s ambition to explore the world encounter its harsh realities, and her mother Lillian using her resourcefulness and intelligence to tackle the ongoing family dramas at home.

'This is a novel about women in the world in the 1960s, both in Australia and abroad, and their resilience and capacity to manage their lives at a time when others want to take that independence and decision-making from them.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In Lillian’s Eden, debut novelist Cheryl Adam takes the reader to Australian rural post-war life through the life of a family struggling to survive. With their farm destroyed by fire, Lillian agrees to the demands of her philandering, violent husband to move to the coastal town of Eden to help look after his Aunt Maggie.

'Juggling the demands of caring for her children and two households, and stoically enduring her husband’s continued indiscretions, Lillian finds an unlikely ally and friend in the feisty, eccentric Aunt Maggie who lives next door.

'With wonderfully drawn characters reminiscent of Ruth Park and Kylie Tennant, Cheryl Adam shows us the stark realities of rural life behind the closed front doors and scented rose-filled gardens. She highlights the endless physical and mental demands on women like Lillian who have to grapple with the challenges of a new homeland as well as never ending family responsibilities.

'This rich, raw novel pays homage to friendship and to the rural women whose remarkable resilience enabled them to find happiness in sometimes the most unlikely of places.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In ‘Under the Bridge’, Adam levels the playing field when a natural disaster gives an impoverished Philippine woman control of the fate of an Australian do-gooder.'

Source: 'The Launch of Our First Ebook' Overland website http://overland.org.au/2012/03/the-launch-of-our-first-ebook-womens-work/ 01/03/2012 (Sighted 11/06/2013)