Her Mother’s Daugher
A Memoir
Born in 1949, Nadia Wheatley grew up with a sense of the mystery of her parents’ marriage. Caught in the crossfire between an independent woman and a controlling man, the child became a player in the deadly game. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature?
After her mother’s death, the ten-year-old began writing down the stories her mother had told her—of a Cinderella-like childhood, followed by an escape into a career as an army nurse in Palestine and Greece, and as an aid-worker in the refugee camps of post-war Germany.
Some fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but an investigation of the bewildering processes of memory itself.
Selected Reviews
“This memoir... is an important addition to the history of Australian social life, and a vivid insight into how individual people can be controlled by repressive social attitudes. Wheatley reminds us of the difference between how family life is supposed to be, and how it is actually experienced.”
“Her Mother’s Daughter ... is not only a beautiful rendering of an “ordinary” life, it is also a significant social history of wartime Europe and post-war Australia, when a woman such as Nina was happier, and safer, in a bomb-ravaged village in the Middle East than a middle class marriage in suburban Sydney.”
Award
Nib Literary Award, 2019