Member Book Releases

Pamela Rushby

Paperback 2024

A new historical novel by multi-award winning author Pamela Rushby published by Walker Books 3 April 2024.


The poster had a picture of a tanned, healthy girl, wearing a regulation uniform hat and shorts that were, surely, anything but regulation. 


When Hilly volunteers for the Australian Women’s Land Army in 1942, she’s sixteen years old. She expects to be picking sun-kissed peaches and bottle-feeding fluffy white lambs. While wearing those flattering shorts. The reality is a little different.


Travelling to farms across Queensland, Hilly encounters backbreaking work – but also friendship and fellowship with other Land Army girls, Aileen and Glad. All seeking independence for their own reasons. War is a chance for a life away from family problems, offering freedom and romance. 


But the poster didn’t mention crutching sheep, or 4am starts. Or the prejudice the girls would face, and the fact that some men needed to be fought off, rather than fought for. Hilly begins to find what she’s capable of – and it’s more than she ever thought possible. She is one of ‘those girls with grit’. 


Pamela Rushby was born in Queensland more years ago than she cares to divulge. She has worked in advertising; as a pre-school teacher; and as a writer and producer of educational television, audio and multimedia.


Pam has written children’s books and television scripts; hundreds of radio and TV commercials; multi award-winning documentaries on Queensland dinosaurs, Australian ecosystems, bilbies, the Crown of Thorns starfish and buried Chinese terracotta warriors; short stories; and freelance journalism. She has won many awards, including a Literature Board of the Australia Council grant to work on archaeological excavations in Egypt and Jordan; a Churchill Fellowship to study educational television in Canada; the Ethel Turner Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; nine Notable Books in the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards; the Nance Donkin Award; and a bag of gold coins at a film festival in Iran.


Her historical novels include When the Hipchicks Went to War (Hachette 2009), The Horses Didn’t Come Home (HarperCollins 2012), Flora’s War (Ford Street Publishing 2013), The Rat-catcher’s Daughter (HarperCollins 2014), Sing a Rebel Song (Omnibus 2015), Lizzie and Margaret Rose (Omnibus 2016), The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle (Walker Books 2020), The Secret Battle (Eagle Books 2021),  Interned (Walker Books 2022), The Mud Puddlers (Walker Books 2023) and Those Girls (Walker Books 2024).


www.pamelarushby.com

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