It’s not often that you get the unsullied memories of a child growing up in the Australian countryside during the years of the Second World War published raw and unvarnished over sixty years later. A Wayward Child begins with Rita’s country girlhood in Tumut where her father worked as a guard at the open prison farm. It describes the traumatic effects of the Second World War years on her mind and on her family, and the harsh values that informed a generation that was emotionally and intellectually starved. Rita survived with those values. This is a testimony of how difficult it is for precocious children to try to grasp problems that adults have difficulty in grasping themselves – a situation not uncommon in the isolated communities of the Australian country.
She has a writer’s eye for detail. Some of her descriptions are almost Dickensian. A writerly touch is apparent in the last sentence of a paragraph devoted to a magnificently detailed description of her grandfather and his clothing: “I think I liked him most for the way he dressed…” This book is touching, funny, sad and downright hilarious in parts, I look forward to reading more from Rita Lowther and highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a a good yarn about real families in the Australian bush during the 1940’s.

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