Mabel Edmund's true-life stories begin with her happy childhood spent among Aborigines and freed slaves. At 14 her father and her strongly Christian mother sent her out west to muster cattle and sheep on properties owned by their friends. There she met a stockman, Digger Edmund, who brought her back to his South Sea Islander community on the central Queensland coast. The youngest bride in the community, Mabel Edmund was taken in by the womenfolk. They taught her how to chop firewood, draw water from a well, cook a porcupine, and bake a feather-light sponge cake. At 16, while the rest of Australia celebrated the end of World War II, she was living in the bush with her young family, reluctantly sharing her dirt-floored home with cheeky dingoes, carpet snakes, and deadly taipans. With her husband often away working, Mabel Edmund's cheerful optimism brought the family safely through its disasters. She then embarked on successful careers in local politics, black activism and art. The memoir was highly commended in the David Unaipon Award for first-time Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors ... [Back cover].