An exquisitely compelling story of courage, destiny and the search for home When orphan girl Bertha Frank gets onto a ship in New York in February 1937 to go to South Africa to marry a man she’s never met, she doesn’t know that she is repeating a journey to escape poverty and the persecution of the Pogroms made by her father from Lithuania to America in 1913, or that she is foreshadowing a journey Shelley Davidow, her granddaughter, will make from South Africa to America decades into the future. In 1937, she doesn’t know that it will be fifty years before she returns to visit her home, nor that she will live through tumultuous social upheaval in an Africa on the brink of transformation. As a hopeful young adult, she cannot imagine the beauty, the love and the irreparable loss she will experience as a Jewish migrant in South Africa. Nor does she know that far in the future, her grandchildren will retrace her steps backwards to escape the violent, decaying outpost of white colonialism. In the 1980s, at the height of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow decides to run from her country, and spends the next two decades searching for home. Then, in 2012 she discovers a box of Bertha’s letters and diaries. Shelley realises that her life is an echo of patterns and repeating journeys; that there is a whispering in the blood of our forebears that tells the story of all our lives. From the Pogroms of Eastern Europe, to America’s Great Depression, to the rise and fall of Apartheid South Africa and finally to Australia in the 21st century, Whisperings in the Blood explores the emotional legacy that we inherit from our immigrant ancestors and the complex heartache of leaving the land of one’s birth.

Whisperings in the Blood: A Memoir

Davidow, Shelley

Parenting & Relationships

University of Queensland Press

During the terrifying years of Apartheid in South Africa, Shelley Davidow’s family was a crime. At a time when it was illegal for black and white people to live together, Shelley’s social activist parents took in Rosie, an abandoned black three-year-old. Rosie grew up as a beloved daughter and sister in a white household. Against the backdrop of racist laws and ever-present threats of violence, Shelley’s parents did all they could to provide a safe, happy home for their five children. But when Rosie was sixteen, devastating truths came to light, shattering the family’s understanding of the past.
In this haunting memoir, Shelley Davidow unravels the memories of her early life, searching for truth and reconciliation. Shadow Sisters leaves us with a deeper understanding of family love – but what if, sometimes, love is not enough?

Shadow Sisters

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Words are disappearing from the world. Something is lurking in the deepest waters, devouring all the words that are no longer used. No one has noticed, but the world is slowly growing darker. For many years no children have come to the Enchanted Islands in search of Wisdom, and the Wise Enchanter is growing old. Four children from the corners of the earth have been sent on a quest to rediscover each letter, unlock the treasure of language, and thereby grow wise. Time is running out; if the children do not reach the castle of the Wise Enchanter in time, Wisdom and light may vanish from the world altogether. ∞ ∞ ∞ “We’re trying to get to the castle of the Wise Enchanter,’ Michael said. ‘It’s very difficult.” “But you have found your way to the Enchanted Islands,” said the hermit. “That is the first step, and that is good. I can’t tell you which way to go, since I have no idea. You see, very few people have ever reached the castle itself, and no one has been there since I have been here, but I can tell you one thing…if you keep going straight through the forest, it will end. At the end, there are two paths. One path is the Right Way. The other is the Left Way. One of these paths is the true way, and will take you where you need to go; but you can only know which is which once you have gone along the way of your choice for some time.” “What if the Right way is the wrong way, or the Left way is the right way?” Lauren asked. “It sounds confusing.” “Yes, yes, of course it does. But once you’ve done it, everything will be perfectly clear.”

The Wise Enchanter: A Journey through the Alphabet

Kurzyca, Krystyna

Children's Books

Bell Pond Books

Playing With Words: A Introduction to Creative Craft

Drawing on years of experience of writing, teaching and publishing, this book offers essential tools for anyone interested in honing their craft. With a variety of exercises and freewriting prompts to help you try new styles and approaches, it is suitable for aspiring poets, non-fiction writers, novelists and all lovers of words.

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Palgrave

Drawing on years of experience of writing, teaching and publishing, this book offers essential tools for writers interested in honing their craft. Whether you’re a poet, non-fiction writer, novelist, journalist, student or simply a lover of words, it will take you on an exciting and challenging journey to becoming a sophisticated writer.  As in the learning of any true craft or art, first the focus is on specific skills, then on consolidating those skills, which by the end will be innate. Through a variety of exercises and freewriting prompts, Playing with Words will help you develop your writing, trying out new styles and approaches along the way. Use this book in a class, in a group, or alone in a writer’s attic. 

Williams, Paul.

Red Globe Press

For those that have mastered the basics of memoir and wish to probe this brand of creative nonfiction further, Writing the Radical Memoir uses salient theories about memory and the self to challenge assumptions about how we remember and tell the truth of our lives when we write about it. Innovative in approach and making new critical ideas accessible, each chapter maps out the key principles of such writers as Barthes, Lacan, Derrida, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Philippe Le Jeune and Joseph Campbell, invokes literary examples to show how other writers have mastered the idea before reflecting on how you can practically apply the theory to your writing. With original exercises and prompts for further reading that bridge the gap between the theoretical and how it might be put into practice, the book is attentive to the multiple facets of the genre of nonfiction writing generally, covering such topics as:\n- The writer/ reader contract 
- How to embark on a thematic/ symbolic exploration of themes and incidents in your life 
- How neuro-scientific theory can inform our understanding of memory and recall and what happens to our memories when we remember them 
- Character development and the ethics of writing about real people 
- How constructing your identity in memoir offers a chance to push back against traditional structures 
- That memoir might not be preservation of your past but a process of self-erasure 
- How J. M. Coetzee's Autrebiography trilogy challenges traditional biography\nBy bringing together lived experience, post-structuralist and postmodernist theories, praxis and artistic vision as a unique approach to writing memoir, this book encourages you to think the self, how it is portrayed, created, erased and made strange through the process of writing and remembering.

Writing the Radical Memoir: A Theoretical and Craft-based Approach

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Bloomsbury Academic

A compelling and informative guide for every parent, 'Raising Stress - Proof Kids' offers an eye - opening view on how the unhealthy and unnecessary stresses of our educational systems as well as outdated perspectives on parenting affect our children. Drawing on cutting - edge research from the Institute of HeartMarth, California, as well as the author's own extensive experience in working with children and teens, it offers practical advice on how we can significantly and positively impact the lives of our children as they move through developmental phases and become mature, self - regulated and composed beings ready to succeed in our increasingly complex world.

Raising Stress-Proof Kids: Parenting Today's Children For Tomorrow's World

Parenting

ReadHowYouWant

Spirit of the Mountain

Growing Up & Facts of Life

SteinerBooks

Grounded: The off-road guide to parenting in an unstable world

Nag, Michael C.

Amba Press

These warm and wonderful readers will delight both students and teachers as they guide young children along the path of written language one step at a time. Written in order and phonetically, each story focuses on specific word groups, sounds and sentence structures. Each story has a beginning, middle and an ending. Succeeding stories build on these skills and then move on to the next level of skill. The books are conceived in much the same way as the "Dick and Jane" readers of an earlier era, but with a very important difference: these stories have a touching "heart content" to them. The stories are gently humorous while honoring nature, animals and the environment. The illustrations in their warm simplicity are wonderful compliments to the stories! Whether you are rewarding an eager reader with a first experience of reading something someone else wrote, or helping a struggling reader get the hang of all those letters, these readers are sheer joy for everyone. The six books use simple words that the early reader will easily grasp. They have been carefully chosen by a reading specialist to help students advance from the short vowels to the silent "e" to the vowel combinations. At the back of each book is a list of sight words that should be reviewed with the child before reading the book. This book is a compilation of all 6 individual booklets in "The Early Reader Series" into one paperback book. Appropriate for Grades 1-3.

Early Phonetic Readers: 6 Book Collection

Animals

Jalmar Press

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Books by Davidow, Shelley