'Wars never end. They go on loudly or they go on quietly. They grip you with bulldog teeth. The town of Wirrawee is emerging from war, slowly. School's back in, Juicy's is open for coffee, farmers are bidding at the cattle sales. Ellie Linton at last gets what she longed for and what she fought for, to be back on the farm with her parents. But it's not the same. A new nation is on the other side of a new border. Suddenly the war is about to explode into Ellie's life again. The effects are devastating. The consequences will change her forever.' - Dust jacket, (2003)
It is a time of profound change for Ellie Linton. Enemies are everywhere. Some come crawling over the hills, others drive in and knock on the front door. Sometimes her friends are there and sometimes they are not. Ellie fights every inch of the way. But when courage and imagination are not enough, when she is trapped and helpless, Ellie must face the end of life as she knows it, standing alone, sustained only by her own strength. (Source: Trove)
'This article compares two 'lost child' incidents from non-indigenous Australian fiction. One is from John Marsden's Tomorrow Series, the other from Mary Grant Bruce's Billabong Series. Both series feature as their central character a young girl with the surname Linton who proves herself brave, daring, and a good friend and citizen, particularly when rescuing children lost in the bush. When the two series' lost child incidents are compared, it becomes apparent that these outward resemblances are also mirrored by some deeper discursive parallels.
An analysis of the constructions of subjectivity and spatiality around the 'lost child' events reveals closely-matching discourses of mateship and settler belonging. The comparison also foregrounds the core ideologies of gender, class, nationalism and race that in turn underpin these discourses, showing how each of these texts remains inflected with textual strategies of othering and indigenisation that are fundamental to imperialism.' (Author's abstract)
'This article compares two 'lost child' incidents from non-indigenous Australian fiction. One is from John Marsden's Tomorrow Series, the other from Mary Grant Bruce's Billabong Series. Both series feature as their central character a young girl with the surname Linton who proves herself brave, daring, and a good friend and citizen, particularly when rescuing children lost in the bush. When the two series' lost child incidents are compared, it becomes apparent that these outward resemblances are also mirrored by some deeper discursive parallels.
An analysis of the constructions of subjectivity and spatiality around the 'lost child' events reveals closely-matching discourses of mateship and settler belonging. The comparison also foregrounds the core ideologies of gender, class, nationalism and race that in turn underpin these discourses, showing how each of these texts remains inflected with textual strategies of othering and indigenisation that are fundamental to imperialism.' (Author's abstract)