Ursula Dubosarsky
Allen & Unwin 2006

The whiff of intrigue and mystery will keep you turning the pages of this story of a family living in Australia in the 1950’s. Told from the viewpoints of the three daughters aged 6, 11 and 15, the story follows their life with their mother, their war sore father, who is often absent on his ship (or is he?), and footloose and fancy free Uncle Paul, who might be making things better and then, maybe he’s making things worse. And just who are the mysterious new neighbours with the long black cars? The way the outside world intrudes on the family is creatively captured in the newspaper clippings that divide the chapters and they report of Russian spies, children dying of polio, the excitement of the Royal Easter show.

About the author

After finishing school, Ursula Dubosarsky went to Sydney University to study English and languages, including Old Icelandic and Latin. When she graduated, she moved to Canberra to work in the public service, and in the evenings after work she wrote a time slip adventure called Zizzy Zing. She then spent a year travelling, meeting her Argentinean husband, Avi, while working on a kibbutz in Israel. They married in London, then returned to Australia to live, where their daughter Maisie was born. At this time Ursula wrote her first published book, Maisie and the Pinny Gig illustrated by an old school friend, Roberta Landers. She then wrote a comic children's novel, High Hopes, which she sent as an unsolicited manuscript to Penguin Books in Melbourne. The book was accepted.

Since this time, Ursula has published many more novels as well as a number of books for younger children, and has won several prestigious national literary prizes. She lives in Sydney with her family - Avi, daughter Maisie, and two sons, Dover and Bruno. She recently completed a PhD in English literature at Macquarie University.

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