Strong Women And Tough Country

Apparently determined to keep her hand in, in the medium that struck her first literary pay-dirt, Catherine Gaskin has returned to early Australia for her latest novel, “I Know My Love”.

ALTHOUGH Miss Gaskin is usually referred to as an Aus tralian writer, cosmopolitan would be a better word. She was born in Ireland, went to Australia as a small child and was brought up there, be same something of a literary prodigy by the time she was 19 and, since the war, has been constantly abroad, mostly in England. She is now mar ried and in New York.

From each of the places where she has lived has come at least one novel—of the early settlement of New South Wales; of smugglers in the Romney Marsh country; of Big Busi ness in America. But most of her novels have one thing in common: Women of strong character.

In time, her new story follows after Sara Dane, the Australian novel that put her in the best-selling class, and takes eight vital years out of the lives of Emma Brown, the Langleys and the Maguires—and out of the in fant State of Victoria.

The years are 1852-64; they in clude the Ballarat gold rush, the Eureka Stockade, the beginnings of the dusty town that grew into the city of Melbourne.

The State of Victoria was not yet 20 years old, the dim outlines of a land-owning aristrocracy were just forming, but the roots of the families who would be rich and powerful were down, and spreading.

Like her other Australian heroine, Sara Dane, Emmy had had the humblest beginnings. When she joined the rebellious Irish Maguires on the goldfields she was running away from a tavern keeper who had raped her

and whom she had accidentally shot with his own pistol.

She shared their stew across the camp fire at the diggings, saw a mem ber of the family fall when the diggers challenged authority behind the stockade at Eureka. Small and plain in comparison with Rosa, the beauty of the family, she nonetheless became the rock to which they all clung.

When the scene shifts to the wider one of Melbourne, Emmy becomes the city’s first businesswoman and keeper not only of the Maguire conscience but of the wealthy Lang ley conscience as well.

This is a story of women—as most of the Gaskin novels have been—in which there are men in plenty but mainly as props for the desires, whims and plans of women.

There is no mealy-mouthed subjec tion about these strong females Miss Gaskin creates. She has them steer a nice path between virtue and neces sity—and sometimes has them dis pense with steering altogether.

The result is a story that is real and robust and which proves again that it is not necessary to go to the American West for red-blooded tales of pioneer ing enterprise.

This novel was presumably written in New York. Its early Victoria back ground is none the less authentic for that. The writer may have been ab sent from Australia for many years but she is still able to conjure up the old familiar atmosphere. (I KNOW MY LOVE. Published by Wm. Collins Ltd. Price, 22/6.)