AUSTRALIA YEARS The Life of a Nuclear Migrant

By P. Anna Johnson

Book Overview

With the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union at its height, a young couple migrates from Boston to Australia to escape imminent nuclear war. They are surprised to meet many people in Sydney who had moved from North America and Europe for the same reason. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, had migrated to Australia and New Zealand to find shelter. The Australian press refers to them as "nuclear migrants." AUSTRALIA YEARS reveals a creative young woman's search for a meaningful life in an unfamiliar land. Personal events unfold amidst the beauty of the Australian landscape and the historic backdrop of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the women's liberation movement.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1430309415
• ISBN13: 9781430309413
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Lulu Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

I really enjoyed this book!

We all crave stories of other people's lives--where their decisions took them, how they coped with what befell them, what they make of it years later. This urge can be satisfied with fiction as well as nonfiction but there is special meaning in reading about a real life. Anna Johnson's lovely memoir, Australia Years: The Life of a Nuclear Migrant is the story of a thoughtful and creative young woman at the beginning of her adulthood, full of idealism and hope for finding a place to live in harmony with the world and away from war. A wiser but still idealistic woman looks back, forty years later, on the triumphs and disappointments of those precious years.

Fascinating & Compassionate

This is a fascinating and courageous book with insightful glimpses into 1960s U.S., Australia, the peace movement, race relations and real life through the wise eyes of peace activist, Anna Johnson. She catapults you into a world you may have only read about, and brings alive the famous and not so famous people who have helped shape history while generously sharing her personal experiences with life and love.

A fascinating glimpse of emigrating FROM the USA

This is a memoir by an emigrant FROM, not TO, the U.S.A, part of a little known protest migration of young people, couples, families who tried to leave the dangers of the nuclear arms race their country was immersed in for the safer, beckoning shores of an Australia open to white immigrants only. A fascinating glimpse of the many contradictions, personal and political, facing a young, concerned, college-educated woman of that time, on the cusp of the 1960s and the great chages in store for women and so many others in the United States.