Africa’s Eden

The third book in the Eden series from Cheryl Adam, Africa’s Eden is about the choices unmarried women in the 60s had to make and the challenges of finding love in unexpected places. As a young unmarried mother in the 1960s, Maureen faces stifling disapproval and condemnation from mainstream society. Desperate to create a new life for herself and her baby, she rekindles an old romance and moves to South Africa under Apartheid.

But her precarious journey to Africa’s Eden is not the paradise she anticipated. Cultures smash against each other, family relationships are strained, there is death and despair, violence and injustice. But there is also humour, fun, family and friendship, as Maureen has to decide where her future lies. Is it here in Africa or back home in distant Eden, in her Australian homeland?

Previous books by Cheryl Adam have been praised by Carmel Bird, Kristin Henry, Hazel Edwards, Amanda Lohrey and others. Her debut Lillian’s Eden was compared favourably to The Dressmaker and Cloudstreet. Each book in the series has wonderfully drawn characters, drama, and humour, as they trace a family’s history from the 1950s-70s, highlighting the choices women made in each decade and whose remarkable resilience enabled them to find happiness in sometimes the most unlikely of places.