Abandoned by her feckless husband during the Depression, Amy decides to leave her country town - and her three infant children - and try her luck in the big smoke. Life in wartime Sydney is far from easy, but for Amy there are the hard-won satisfactions of an office job and a house of her own. Until her eldest, Kathleen, appears needing a home while she attends high school. And Amy falls in love with a married man... Enlivened with note-perfect observations of the everyday, wrenching in its portrayal of a young woman struggling to succeed yet often wilfully ignorant of her own children, Olga Masters' second and last novel is a triumph. At its centre is Amy, one of the great characters in Australian literature. This edition comes with an introduction by the novelist Eva Hornung.
1979: Fellowship of Australian Writers, Qld (FAWQ), R. Carson Gold Award for The Snake and Bad Tom
1980: The South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies Award for The Rages of Mrs Torrens (jointly with Elizabeth Jolley)
