The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

This memoir follows Jill Ker as she grows up on an isolated sheep farm in NSW Australia in the 30s and 40s. Her childhood is so unusual, filled with a large amount of responsibility, lonliness, hard work and despair over a lenghty drought. When Jill ends up at an elementary school in Sydney after they move to the city, she doesn’t know how to play and is totally confused about the idea of physical education. She has never had any friends her age. Jill ends up as the first female President of Smith College, and the second half of the book follows her academic, and ultimately (as they are so closely intertwined) self realization at university and through travel and her difficult relationship with her mother. Parts of this book are tragically sad (starving sheep during the drought, her father’s death, the untimely death of another family member) but an interesting snapshot of growing up as a intellectual female during a hard time in an unforgiving country. Very interesting.