Lillian's Eden

In Lillian’s Eden, debut novelist Cheryl Adam takes the reader to Australian rural post-war life in the 1950s through the life of a family struggling to survive. With their farm destroyed by fire, Lillian agrees to the demands of her philandering, violent husband to move to the coastal town of Eden to help look after his Aunt Maggie.

Juggling the demands of caring for her children and two households, and stoically enduring her husband’s continued indiscretions, Lillian finds an unlikely ally and friend in the feisty, eccentric Aunt Maggie who lives next door.

With wonderfully drawn characters reminiscent of Ruth Park and Kylie Tennant, Cheryl Adam shows us the stark realities of rural life behind the closed front doors and scented rose-filled gardens. She highlights the endless physical and mental demands on women like Lillian who have to grapple with the challenges of a new homeland as well as never ending family responsibilities.

This rich, raw novel pays homage to friendship and to the rural women whose remarkable resilience enabled them to find happiness in sometimes the most unlikely of places.