Born in Sydney's western suburbs in the late 1950s, Geraldine Brooks longs to discover the vivid places where she believes history and culture are made. Pen pals from the Middle East, France and America offer her the window she craves on life beyond Australia's isolated backyard.
Twenty years later, and worlds away from her sheltered girlhood, Brooks is an award winning foreign correspondent covering wars and famines. Still intrigued by the foreign correspondents of her girlhood, she embarks on a human treasure hunt in Israel, France and the US to find those long-lost pen friends. This is an intimate and moving, often humorous memoir of growing up in Australia in the 1960s.
