Jill Ker Conway Critical Essay | Critical Review by Keith Henderson

Critical Review by Keith Henderson

SOURCE: “An Arduous Journey from Outback to Ivied Halls,” in Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 1989, p. 14.

In the following review, Henderson offers a positive assessment of The Road from Coorain, praising Conway's perception and tenacity.

Early in her book Jill Ker Conway describes the differing impact Australia's vast interior had on her mother and father. “She saw no landmarks to identify direction, only emptiness. My father saw strong fertile soil, indications of grazed-out saltbush, dips and changes in the contours of the land and its soils, landmarks of all kinds.”

It was from this land, or the chunk of it they named “Coorain” (Aboriginal for “windy place”), that Conway's parents were to wrest a living. The unceasing struggle against nature—culminating in a disastrous drought that nearly destroyed their sheep station—shaped the author's early perceptions of life.

And her mother's sense of emptiness and impending disaster, persisting long after...
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