Sometimes events occur as one might wish but sometimes they do not. So says the ever-practical Ruby, always striving for what is right and proper, from the time we meet her as a striking soldier's fiancée through to the rather less steady years of her old age. With an eyebrow pencil in one hand and gardening shears in the other, Ruby navigates the intervening years doing her duty as a woman, allowing marriage and motherhood to fill her with purpose and pleasure - and only occasionally wondering, Is this all there is? In her moving, captivating fiction debut, award-winning author Anna Goldsworthy recreates Adelaide and Melbourne