A Town Like Alice

A young woman enduring war-time hardship and defying the conventions of her time, this made for a great binge-read. The first half is set in WII in Malaya, and our heroine Jean Paget becomes the unappointed leader of a group of English women and children, who are marched across the island by Japanese prison guards. She uses her knowledge of the local language and an empathetic approach to foreign customs to negotiate for the group's survival. Returning to the site years later, she develops a good sense for how to help the Malay women and subsequently improve their communities. A skill she employs again in the second half of the book, as she explores the dusty and hot Australian outback. I liked her entrepreneurial spirit and success, which made up for the rather too comfortable love story.

Feminism as written by a rather conservative man in 1950. Some blunders, but mostly laudable. There's also some racism, that mostly - but not always - gets attributed to the characters. Still, this was a great read.