The Nursemaid’s Journey

Sheila Newberry

WHEN high-spirited, unconventional girl Molly Sparkes leaves her convent school in the heart of rural Kent in 1906, she is eager to embark on the journey of a lifetime to Australia... but what does the future hold for a girl who can turn her hand to anything?

Sheila Newberry (pictured below), the Suffolk-born author who died in 2020, knew a thing or two about the ups and downs of family life. A mother of nine children, and with twenty-two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, this much-loved writer has left a legacy of beautiful sagas – including The East End Nurse and The Winter Baby – which have enthralled readers across the decades.

In The Nursemaid’s Journey, we join the irrepressible, 18-year-old Molly on her big adventure as she accompanies the formidable Mrs Alexa Nagel on a tour of Australia, acting as her companion and nursemaid to Alexa’s motherless granddaughter, Fay.

After a long voyage at sea, they finally arrive in New South Wales but living in rural Australia, and far away from everything she knows, Molly is forced to do some rapid growing up. Fascinated by cool, laconic stockman Henny Rasmussen – a man who, like many others, has come to Australia to lose himself and to forget – Molly is heartbroken when he tells her he is about to return to his native Denmark.

Desperate to forget him, she turns her attentions to Rory Kelly, a circus acrobat. Will Molly flout convention and be tempted by the romance of a circus life and will her ultimate decision be one she comes to regret? The Nursemaid’s Journey is packed with emotion, warmth, a cast of vibrant characters, and an addictive sense of youthful charm as Newberry explores the unexpected twists and turns of Molly’s eventful life, and the struggles, separations, loves and friendships that she encounters along the way. With its rich period detail and nostalgia, and written with Newberry’s natural empathy and insight into what it meant to live through times of change and personal challenges, this uplifting story is a saga to savour.
(Zaffre, paperback, £8.99)