The Long Walk

Kerry Greenwood (author)

Hodder Children's Books, Australia: 2004; 245pp

ISBN: 0733617662

Genres: historical fiction

Issues: family

The time is the Great Depression; the place is Melbourne, Australia. Isa Wyatt is only twelve but she already carries the burden of a mother, as she raises her three younger siblings while her own mother struggles through heavy cleaning work to earn enough money to feed them and pay the rent.

Their father is away, working on the Great Ocean Road that is being built. He sometimes sends home a little money, but it isn't enough, so Isa helps her mother with the washing they take in. She also does intricate beading and embroidery for a Melbourne dressmaker. Isa is determined that no matter how poor they may be, nobody is going to ever be able to accuse her family of being neglected and dirty. The children are hungry, but clean; their clothes threadbare, but carefully mended. They will survive.

Until, that is, their mother falls ill and is sent to a rest home in the Dandenong Ranges - a place for people who have caught tuberculosis, or TB. The authorities intend to place the children in four different foster families. Isa promised her mother some time ago that she would never allow the children to be separated, no matter what happened. So what is she to do? The only thing she can think of is to take the children with her and set out to find her father. It is a long, hard journey, and a very frightening one for city children, as they encounter the stark isolation of the bush. There are generous farmers who offer them food in return for Isa's sewing skills but there are also the usual thieves and scoundrels that travel the roads. All Isa has to hold her family together is her own determination and she is not sure that it will be enough.

Kerry Greenwood is a good storyteller, as her many adult novels testify. Her skill at capturing personalities and relationships, in combination with sound research into the period, has resulted in a strong, lively narrative that captures both the hardship and unexpected generosity of the people during this difficult time. In Isa, readers of the author's other works will see yet another of the strong-minded, determined women she loves to write about.

Very readable and historically accurate.