The Daughters Of Mars

Joining the war effort as nurses, two Australian sisters become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger as they serve alongside remarkable women during the first World War..

In the tradition of Atonementand Birdsong, the Durance sisters leave Australia to nurse on the front during WWI and discover a world beyond their imaginings. Shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Prize. Naomi and Sally Durance are daughters of a dairy farmer from the Macleay Valley. Bound together in complicity by what they consider a crime, when the Great War begins in 1914 they hope to submerge their guilt by leaving for Europe to nurse the tides of young wounded. They head for the Dardanelles on the hospital ship Archimedes. Their education in medicine, valour and human degradation continues on the Greek island of Lemnos, then on the Western Front. Here, new outrages - gas, shell-shock - present themselves. Naomi encounters the wonderful, eccentric Lady Tarlton, who is founding a voluntary hospital near Boulogne; Sally serves in a casualty clearing station close to the front. They meet the men with whom they would wish to spend the rest of their lives. Inspired by the journals of Australian nurses who gave their all to the Great War effort and the men they nursed. The Daughters of Marsis vast in scope yet extraordinarily intimate. A stunning tour de force to join the best First World War literature, and one that casts a penetrating light on the lives of obscure but strong women caught in the great mill of history..

In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive. At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings the First World War to vivid life from an unusual perspective. Profoundly moving, it pays tribute to the men and women who voluntarily risked their lives for peace..

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Originally published in 2013 by Random House Australia Pty Ltd..

Booker Prize winner and Living National Treasure, Thomas Keneally still divides critical opinion: he is both a morally challenging stylist and a commercial hack, a wise commentator on society and a garrulous leprechaun. Such judgements are located in the cultural politics of Australia but also linked to ideas about what a literary career should look like. ‘Thomas Keneally’s Career and the Literary Machine’ charts Keneally’s production and reception across his three major markets, noting clashes between national interests and international reach, continuity of themes and variety of topics, settings and genres, the writer’s interests and the publishers’ push to create a brand, celebrity fame and literary reputation, and the tussle around fiction, history, allegory and the middlebrow. Keneally is seen as playing a long game across several events rather than honing one specialist skill, a strategy that has sustained for more than 50 years his ambition to earn a living from writing..

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