Description

Constable [Published date: 1956]. Hard cover, 352 pp. Third printing. Acceptable+ in acceptable dust jacket. Dark blue textured boards with light blue lettering on spine. Light bumping to edges of covers and fading to bottom of spine and light overall scuffing. Spine is lightly cocked but binding is still solid. Original bookseller's sticker on front pastedown and previous owner's name in ink on title page. Light age spotting to edges of text block. Otherwise pages are lightly aged but unmarked with occasional light spotting and soiling. Dust jacket has a 2" X 1" chip on the bottom of the spine and several other large chips and tears and creasing along the edges Moderate overall scuffing to covers with the color rubbed off along the edges. Price clipped. Now in an archival quality Brodart cover. NOT Ex-library. NO remainder marks. Nice jacket art and illustrated end-papers. A good reading copy. [From front jacket flap] The title, Keep Him, My Country, taken from an aboriginal song, is the theme of this tender and tragic love-story set in the untamed country of North Australia. Four generations of white men have run their cattle over millions of acres, impoverishing the land to which inhabitants are bound by their deepest loyalties. Aeroplanes and wireless have broken down the isolation of the Australian outback. But life on the cattle stations has changed little in essentials since the pioneering days, and mustering is still one of the most dangerous ways a man can earn his living. We see the other side of the stockmen's life, when all the station folk, black and white from hundreds of miles around gather at Crocodile Creek for a hilarious race meeting. Mary Durack comes from one of the great pioneering families. She writes from knowledge and love of her own country and its people, and her understanding of the aborigines in their relations with the whites is an important contribution to Australian writing.