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A review by johannalm
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
4.0
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, Carrie Tiffany
Jean Finnegan is traveling on the "Better-Farming Train" throughout Australia dispensing advice to wives as a sewing instructor. She and two other women give advice on cookery, mothering and domestic chores while the men on the train focus on animal husbandry and farming. It is on this train, full of livestock and odd characters, that Jean meets and fall in love with Robert Pettergree, a transplanted English scientist obsessed with soil and scientific ways to grow better crops. Even thought he seems singularly focused on science, there is also a strong sexual passion between him and Jean that draws them together.
Jean and Robert marry and purchase land to cultivate in a hardscrabble part of Australia called the Mellee. Their endless struggles as scientist farmers, and as husband and wife, carry them through the 30's and into the beginning of WWII. Mice infestation, drought, low crop growth and the struggles of friends and neighbors don't seem to deter Robert's mission to live life and grow crops scientifically. Nor do the continued setbacks deter Jean's desire to be the perfect scientific housewife.
Tiffany's prose starkly illuminates the terrifying beauty and brutality of Australia's landscape, and the struggle made by so many to turn sand to soil. There is true love for Australian in this novel. Jean is a woman to admire - courageous and adventurous. A woman of her time and beyond.
Jean Finnegan is traveling on the "Better-Farming Train" throughout Australia dispensing advice to wives as a sewing instructor. She and two other women give advice on cookery, mothering and domestic chores while the men on the train focus on animal husbandry and farming. It is on this train, full of livestock and odd characters, that Jean meets and fall in love with Robert Pettergree, a transplanted English scientist obsessed with soil and scientific ways to grow better crops. Even thought he seems singularly focused on science, there is also a strong sexual passion between him and Jean that draws them together.
Jean and Robert marry and purchase land to cultivate in a hardscrabble part of Australia called the Mellee. Their endless struggles as scientist farmers, and as husband and wife, carry them through the 30's and into the beginning of WWII. Mice infestation, drought, low crop growth and the struggles of friends and neighbors don't seem to deter Robert's mission to live life and grow crops scientifically. Nor do the continued setbacks deter Jean's desire to be the perfect scientific housewife.
Tiffany's prose starkly illuminates the terrifying beauty and brutality of Australia's landscape, and the struggle made by so many to turn sand to soil. There is true love for Australian in this novel. Jean is a woman to admire - courageous and adventurous. A woman of her time and beyond.