To love a sunburnt country (Matilda Saga #4) by Jackie French

To love a sunburnt country is set in Australia during WWII. It's main character is Nancy Clancy, granddaughter of Clancy of the Overflow, and a worthy ancestor of Clancy as she is very much a girl who loves to be out in the bush and has a deep love and understanding for her sunburnt country. As the book opens Nancy is in Malaya, having gone there to help her older brother Ben, and his wife Moira pack up to return to Australia. She ends up staying longer than she intended because Moira has given birth to Gavin and she has been too ill to travel. By the time they are ready to do so the Japanese have begun to invade Malaya and, though they flee to Singapore, it is too late. They do escape on a boat but it is torpedoed and sunk and Nancy, Moira and Gavin are washed up on an island and put into a prison camp with 10 other women. Their time in the prison camp and their struggle to survive malnourishment and disease is poignantly narrated by Jackie. Little Gavin is the one thing that binds both the women and their Japanese guards together, and keeps them going. In keeping Gavin alive they have something to cling onto and to live for despite the terrible conditions that they endure.

The book moves back and forth between the family and friends in Australia, and how they are faring during the war, and Nancy’s prison camp. Interspersed are details about what has happened to Nancy's brother, Ben. None of the family and friends know whether Nancy, Moira, Gavin and Ben have survived but they continue to hope. When Nancy left for Malaya she had met, and begun a tentative relationship with, Matilda's son, Michael. It is through his eyes that we see the events unfolding in Australia and the agonising wait everyone has to see if Nancy, Moira , Gavin and Ben will survive.

Even though this is part of the Matilda Saga series it can be read as a standalone book as there is enough information in the book to give you background on all the characters. This I think is her best book yet in the series. It is a wonderful sweeping saga which will keep you engrossed till the end and will shock you at times as well as make you weep and smile.


Rita @ Hawthorn


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The road to Gundagai (Matilda Saga #3) by Jackie French

After her family is killed in a boat accident, and a house fire cripples her legs, Blue Laurence goes to live with her elderly aunts.  Here she realises that someone is trying to poison her.  She escapes and joins the Magnifico Family Circus where she is disguised as a mermaid.  But Blue isn’t the only one trying to avoid detection, and it seems that there are many secrets being kept by the circus. This is the next exciting instalment in the Matilda saga.

Rita @ Hawthorn Library

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Pennies for Hitler by Jackie French

It's 1939 and Georg, who is part Jewish, is smuggled out of Germany in a suitcase to live with his aunt in London. When she is unable to look after him he is sent to live in Australia with the kind Peaslake family. Now known as George, so no one will suspect he is German, Georg worries that if the Peaslake's know his secret they will send him back to Germany. In a world turned upside down Georg finds acceptance and tolerance.

 

Rita @ Hawthorn

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Nanberry by Jackie French

When the First Fleet arrives in Botany Bay, the settlers inadvertently bring with them a virus that infects the Indigenous people living around the colony. Nanberry, a young Indigenous boy is tragically orphaned when his family die of the fever that he manages to survive. The colony's surgeon, John White nurses Nanberry back to health and adopts the young boy. As Nanberry quickly picks up English and English customs, he is trapped between what he has always known, that of his tribe and what he is coming to know, that of the new colony.


This is such a great book if you are like me and enjoy stories based on true events but it's still amazing either way! Jackie French takes you into the world of 1789 and onwards Australia. What would it have been like for the Indigenous people to meet these new settlers who came in big ships across the water? What would it have been like for the settlers to turn the bush into a colony?

Ivy @ Ashburton Library

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