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This is the story of Sheila Buchanan, an Australian-born artist who spent 60 years dreaming of her Australian home. The story follows 80 years of correspondence between the family in England, Australia, the USA, and Canada. It illustrates how families banded together to survive depression, political persecution, and grief through the love of nature and each other. Sheila was orphaned, married three times, and had only 9 years of a happy marriage to Dexter Buell. She suffered from depression, but through her paintings, and love of nature experienced joy. Her paintings reflect nature and make fun of political and family problems. After she was widowed in the 1950s, Sheila planned to return home to Australia with three of her children. She had her passport and was going to travel via the Suez Canal and visit her Egyptian boyfriend. Her brother Charles Buchanan had made arrangements for her to find work in Queensland. The sale of her home fell through and she was afraid she would be doing to her children what her mother had done to her so she stayed in the USA. Finally at age 70 her son sent her to Australia to visit her niece Florence McGahan (who happens to be the mother of the writer Andrew McGahan), her beloved older brother Charlie was no longer alive. Her niece Florence felt it was like she had never left, she was home.
This biography is very carefully researched and written from the people's view of the politics and economics of its time. Because women had children we may speak of men, and because leaders have followers and alternative thinkers we may speak of leaders. This is the story of women who had just gotten the right to vote in the USA, and who made a difference even though popular history either ignored or demonized their contributions.
