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''Why didn’t you and Daddy want people to give you any presents?' I used to ask. But my mother could never be drawn into talking about the wedding. I assumed it was because she did not wish to be reminded of the ghastly mistake she had made in marrying my father.
'AS a child, Nadia Wheatley had a sense of the great divide between her parents, who had met and married while working in Germany on the front line of the Cold War. Growing up in 1950s Australia, the child became a player in their deadly contest. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature?
'At the age of ten, the author began writing down her mother’s stories: her Cinderella-like childhood, and her escape into a career as army nurse and refugee aid worker. Fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but also a social history of twentieth-century Australia, told through the lives of a mother and her daughter.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
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Dedication:
i.m.
N.I.W.
3/4/1906 - 13/11/1958
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Her Mother’s Daughter : A Memoir
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: Jessie Street National Women's Library Newsletter , May vol. 30 no. 2 2019; (p. 3) 'It was a privilege to hear the multi-award-winning author of many books for children, biographer of Charmian Clift and now memoirist, Nadia Wheatley. Nadia’s talk focused on her recent book, Her Mother’s Daughter, the intense and complex story of her mother Neen’s life, and Nadia’s memories of childhood, a relationship truncated by her mother’s death when she was only nine. These memories were tended by Nadia, taken out and drawn on over the years to keep her presence real.' (Introduction) -
Neen and Nadia : A Moving Family Memoir
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 404 2018; (p. 18-19)'When John Norman Wheatley met Nina Watkin in Germany in 1946, he would have regarded her as a lesser being on all fronts: woman to his man, forty to his forty-eight, Australian to his English, nurse to his doctor. They met as fellow employees of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), working with wartime refugees from an assortment of European countries.' (Introduction)
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Neen and Nadia : A Moving Family Memoir
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 404 2018; (p. 18-19)'When John Norman Wheatley met Nina Watkin in Germany in 1946, he would have regarded her as a lesser being on all fronts: woman to his man, forty to his forty-eight, Australian to his English, nurse to his doctor. They met as fellow employees of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), working with wartime refugees from an assortment of European countries.' (Introduction)
-
Her Mother’s Daughter : A Memoir
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: Jessie Street National Women's Library Newsletter , May vol. 30 no. 2 2019; (p. 3) 'It was a privilege to hear the multi-award-winning author of many books for children, biographer of Charmian Clift and now memoirist, Nadia Wheatley. Nadia’s talk focused on her recent book, Her Mother’s Daughter, the intense and complex story of her mother Neen’s life, and Nadia’s memories of childhood, a relationship truncated by her mother’s death when she was only nine. These memories were tended by Nadia, taken out and drawn on over the years to keep her presence real.' (Introduction)