You are invited to join Minnie on her journey from a tragic childhood in Northern Ireland to Queensland, Australia.
Experience the challenges she faces, including droughts, floods, World War I, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and the loss of a child. This is the inspiring story of one woman's battle as she strives to fulfil her dreams and create a happy future for her family. It also highlights the power of family unity.
One Goodreads reviewer described this book as an Australian version of Little House on the Prairie or Little Women, making it the perfect Christmas gift.
You are invited to join Minnie on her journey from a tragic childhood in Northern Ireland to Queensland, Australia.
Experience the challenges she faces, including droughts, floods, World War I, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and the loss of a child. This is the inspiring story of one woman's battle as she strives to fulfil her dreams and create a happy future for her family. It also highlights the power of family unity.
One Goodreads reviewer described this book as an Australian version of Little House on the Prairie or Little Women, making it the perfect Christmas gift.
“Chapter 1
Dayboro, Queensland, Australia—June 1928
A flicker of light sent shadows dancing up the wall when Minnie lit the kitchen lamp. The thirty-one-year-old Ulster woman had left her bed and sleeping husband, Albert, at three a.m. Feet whispering over the cold linoleum, she crept through the darkness towards the kitchen. A quietness, punctuated only by the rhythmic breathing of her slumbering children and the whistling wind, blanketed the house.
The sounds of the outside grew louder. A vicious wind slammed against the external weatherboards and invaded the gaps in the roof iron sheets. Minnie blew on her palms and jiggled her knees to keep warm. After donning her gingham apron, she wandered over the bare floorboards and opened the woodstove door. She lit scraps of newspaper and flung them among the embers from the previous night. The paper curled at the edges before giving life to the embers.
Soon, the stove pumped warmth and stinking steam into the room. Then, the patter of a child’s feet shattered the stillness. Minnie’s second-born child and eldest daughter, eleven-year-old Hazel, entered, her teeth chattering. Hazel helped her mother in the kitchen each morning as[…]”
Excerpt From
BIRDS IN THE NEST
Wendy Hart
This material may be protected by copyright.
This book depicts a time when people of many walks of life had to struggle through poverty and disease in order to survive--simply survive.
The author uses her own family heritage to write, via a fictional account, bout the trials and tribulations her family dealt with. She brings those to life by focusing on the main character, Minnie, and what Minnie must do to overcome disease and death in her family as a child. Minnie loses her mother to consumption when Minnie's only two years old while living in Northern Ireland. During that time, when a family member dies from consumption, that family is shunned by neighbors. Minnie and her sisters don't understand how their once-friendly neighbors now won't speak to them. Her father (her Da) remarries, then dies himself of consumption, and her stepmother decides they must leave Belfast. She books the surviving family members on a ship to Australia.
Upon arriving in Australia, Minnie and her sisters live with their stepmother, who is not an evil stepmother per se, but she has plans for the family. She sends three of the sisters off to work in a factory, which turns out to be a horrible environment for them. More misery and more death await the family.
From the very beginning, I was invested in the novel's characters. The author brings them alive through the tragedies they face and how they handle each one. Minnie, especially, as the main character, is a tower of strength, even though her heart is breaking as she loses family members through early deaths, including one of her own children. The author brings her alive through her determination and courage, demonstrating the role of strong women during the trying times in which the real Minnie lived. She was in Australia during World War I, when Australian men were dying at an alarming rate at places such as Gallipoli. She lived through the Great Depression, which had an impact on Australia, as well as in the United States. She and her family also lived on a farm during a horrible drought that impacted the entire continent of Australia.
And yet, Minnie persisted. She was determined to do whatever was needed to survive--and even thrive--for her family, in hopes that her children might have a better life than she did.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants not only a remarkable story about resilience, but also a peek into history when life wasn't made easier by technology and medical improvements that perhaps we all take for granted today.
If I had a complaint about this book, it would be that I had to get used to the Australian use of single quotation marks (i.e., ') versus double quotation marks (i.e., ") to begin and end quotes. But that's just because I'm used to the way we do things in the United States.
That's a minor quibble in what is a compelling story. I think this is an interesting book worthy of reading, especially with such interesting characters.