True North: A Memoir FROM THE PUBLISHER
With all the openness to life, all the largeness of spirit, that made her girlhood memoir, The Road from Coorain, an acclaimed - and beloved - bestseller, Jill Ker Conway continues her story. She was twenty-five when we left her, driven by a hunger to know and to understand, boarding a plane that would carry her far from her Australian homeland. As True North begins she lands, appropriately enough, in a hurricane, in New York. And is soon at Harvard, a graduate student in history experiencing both exhilaration and culture shock; discovering among friends of many backgrounds an easier sociability than she has ever known; delighting in classes that seem charged with energy, and in the perception that ideas were being taken seriously - yet still feeling like an extraterrestrial on the American planet. We see her joining with five other women to form a household that becomes an "almost magical," hilarious, and harmonious community - the community that functions as her family when she meets the Harvard professor and housemaster who will become her husband, John Conway, himself a historian, Canadian born and bred, decorated for heroism in World War II - the complex man whose mind and spirit complement her own. We see them marrying and learning to live together - during a year at Oxford, in Rome, and as they settle into the new world of Canadian university life - happy with each other, while coping, not always well, with her classically obsessive thesis writing, her as-yet-unresolved conflict with her mother, his periodic bouts of depression, and her realization that even though John's integrity, courage, and devotion to humanistic learning have become the compass point - the true north - by which she steers, there will be times when she has to navigate alone. We witness the moment of her spiritual arrival on this continent and her discovery of her warrior self - fighting for equity in her own career and for other women. This is how a most private woman found for hers
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Conway continues her autobiography in this follow up to The Road from Coorain, picking up with her arrival in the U.S. to begin graduate studies at Harvard, and culminating with her being named the first woman president of Smith College in 1975. (Aug.)
Library Journal
Conway's memoir picks up where her best-selling The Road from Corain left off.
School Library Journal
YA-Following The Road from Coorain (Knopf, 1989), Conway leaves Australia to discover the freedom of open inquiry at Harvard University, and to break away from her mother's oppressive demands. For the first time, she forms true friendships with other women and develops a sense of confidence and happiness that becomes almost complete when she marries Professor John Conway, her ``true north'' (compass point). The Conways face serious challenges as they move to Canada where the author teaches history and later becomes vice president of Toronto University. As the book ends, she is president of Smith College. Conway writes in a clear, brisk, literary style that is readable, engaging, and sometimes lyrical. She details successes and pleasures as well as personal sorrows and disappointments that require background knowledge from the earlier title. The final third of the book is a technical discussion of university-administration issues and of less general appeal, but good for readers interested in academic careers. Mature YAs seeking biography or women's studies will find Conway's continuing journey a fascinating one.-Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
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