The Illustrator

All her life, Eileen has loved to draw and desired to be a commercial artist. In the 1920s, Eileen's talents are well recognised in the Goulburn Valley where she is a farmer's daughter, but this is a place and time when women can only be wives, mothers and homemakers. A woman choosing a career over her husband and baby is unheard of. ' The Illustrator is based on Jill Barclay's real grandmother (set in rural Victoria then on to Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland), a woman who just disappears. The novel traces the unpredictable life journey of a young woman who resists conventional expectations. Written with an acute eye for the period and a sympathy for the distressing choices a woman might be forced to make The Illustrator offers an alternative history for being female and not ordinary in the first half of last century.' Helen Elliott