From the back cover...

They refused to take life as they found it. From the Victorian era to modern times, they dared to be different. they traveled to unknown places - from the wild Australian outback to the exotic far reaches of the British Empire. They scandalized their families with their bold independence, living perilously and loving passionately. They were women for whom life was the great adventure. Through five generations, their strength and courage inspired their daughters to look beyond ordinary lives to a world that had no limits.

RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed as a controlled release to K00kaburra in California via Media Mail. Enjoy!

Thanks for sending this to me! I look forward to reading it!

Girl power, Women power, ra-ra-ra!
Fairbairne's novel of independent, powerful women is written in a flowing, easy prose that steadily leads you through the lives of five generations of women. It is not difficult language, and the cities are vividly rendered. But the women themselves...I found it very hard to like them.
In order of appearance:
Helena: She was beautiful, like a doll, but she just seemed so fragile and breakable! At first I thought she could be interesting, but she began whiny and fussy, which grew quite wearisome as time passed.

Sarah: Well, Sarah was so headstrong and obstinate that I could have believed "shrew" was invented to describe her! I admire her bravery in setting out to strange Australia by herself, and I felt sorry for the displacement she obviously suffered throughout her life. But she was so stubborn! She fought for equal rights and was truly a 'first feminist,' but it is little surprise to me that so many people were uncomfortable around her.

Pearl - I admired her courage in abandoning her life of comfort to be with the (poorer) man she loved. To me she was one of the more likeable charcters.

Ruby - Man, what a dummy! Sorry, but that's all I could think about when she intereacted with Robert Fellowes. The. boy. wants. sex. Duh! C'mon Ruby...get a clue.
In her old age, Ruby mirrors her great-aunt Sarah in many ways. The same feeling of displacement propels her into a new adventure.

Emma - Didn't really get to know her, but she had seemed likeable. But then, she was only a kid when she was blown away by a land mine.

(Side note: I couldn't believe they dragged the Titanic into this book. It felt forced. That was one of the major problems of the book to me. There was an insistance on tying up loose ends that led to many different plotlines feeling forced, such as Jackie's discovery that her scholarship that brought her to America was paid for by a woman who'd come to the US via the Titanic; it was the same woman, readers would know, who was a prison wardess when Sarah was arrested many years before.)

Men were depicted quite poorly; had I known what a strongly feminist novel this was I'm not sure I would've read it. The "Women power, ra-ra-ra!" undertones seemed to surface every few pages in the form of "Look! Women SUFFERED! Behold! Men are CONTROLLING PIGS!" and it was just a little much. I think Fairbairn was quite heavy-handed with her sprinkling of her feminist ideology, which is a shame, because I would've enjoyed the book so much more if it hadn't felt like I was being preached at every chapter.

RELEASE NOTES:
I'm adding this book to dospescados book box that is traveling along. Enjoy!