The Idle Hill of Summer: An Australian Childhood, 1939-1945 by Gavin Souter

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Marks on inside front cover. Foxing to author bio page and foredges. Body text and binding are still quite good.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about Gavin Souter's (1929- ) early years—except the Second World War, which coincided with his adolescence.

From 1939 to 1949, he was more concerned with weighty matters such as collecting stamps, looking for birds' eggs, reading comics, and discovering sex through the dictionary and Spin the Bottle. But even from the idle hill of summer, war could be heard in the distance. Army convoys rumbled across the Kempsey Bridge, and at Mackay, the sky reverberated with lightning and thunderbolts.

A haunting evocation of what it was like growing up peacefully in Australia while the world was at war. (back cover)