What happens when love collides with war, family expectations, and deep religious divides? Join us as we dive into Blossom with author Margaret Hinton, the extraordinary true story of Frederick and Vida—a young couple whose whirlwind romance in Melbourne took a dramatic turn when an unexpected pregnancy sent Fred running… straight into the trenches of Gallipoli. When he returned four years later, nothing was as he left it. Tragedy, a shocking kidnapping, and a battle over Nina, their daughter, would shape generations to come.

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Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

Today, we travel to Melbourne, Australia, and back in time to World War I to meet Vida Bunting. Along the way, you’ll be introduced to her daughter, Nina, and experience a story of love, loss, and resilience—a childhood filled with hardship, a birth, a death, and even a kidnapping. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, let’s meet Nina, the daughter of Vida and the eighth child of Samuel and Elleanora.

Margaret Kinton – Her mother had lots of children, and two had died in childhood, and so she was just one of a family, really, in Victoria, in Soot Scrae, which is a suburb of Melbourne. And she met her husband, but the thing is, he was a Catholic, and she was a Protestant. And she was born in 1915, where Catholics and Protestants just didn’t get on, really.

That is Margaret Kinton and she’s talking about her mother Nina, she will be guiding us through our journey today. Margaret, daughter of Nina, is Vida’s Grand-Daughter and as you can see, religious differences within a family can present some real challenges. If they are approached with open-mindedness and respect, religious diversity can lead to some lively discussions or in the case of Vida it can tear a family apart. Margaret talks about how Vida’s marriage was shaped by the war.

Margaret Kinton – But in the end, she was pregnant, and so they got married, and immediately her husband, Fred, went overseas, because the war was on, the First World War, so anyway, they got married, and I think six weeks after they got married, he was sent over to Gallipoli. And four years later, he came back to my mother, who was then about three and a half, and her mother, Vida. 

I’m throwing a lot of names at you but don’t worry. All of this family drama is played out in the book “Blossom” by Margaret Kinton. In the book she introduces you these and other characters and it’s done in a very nice, story telling style. A skill she inherited honestly.                                  

Margaret Kinton – Well, my mother had a very disruptive childhood, and she used to love to tell stories when she was sitting around the dining room table.

You could definitely call it disruptive. It was the kind of childhood that would ultimately lead to depression 

Margaret Kinton – Well, the government gave ex-soldiers a block of land called soldier settlement land. And so Fred her husband and Nina, and her mother, Vida, went to live on this small plot of land up in central Victoria. But there, Vida drowned in an irrigation channel, and so that left Fred and his daughter, Nina. And so there was a bit of a killing and throwing there, and that’s when the kidnapping happened, because the Catholic family wanted to send her to a Catholic orphanage, and the other family didn’t want her to go. So, Fred just dropped right out of the picture. Nina was brought up by her grandmother, who died when she was about nine, and then she was brought up by her uncle, her mother’s brother, and then she lived with them until she got married.

We all have family drama, and reading Blossom and hearing Margaret’s stories reminded me a lot of my own childhood. That, I think, is the best takeaway. While it’s entertaining to live vicariously through books and stories—just as we do with great television dramas or compelling novels—real-life conflict often has deeper consequences. Many of our struggles could be avoided if we simply took the time to listen and respect one another, because those caught in the crossfire are often the ones hurt the most.

Margaret Kinton – Just look deeper into people, you know, because if they’d all sat down and talked about it and tried to work things out, it might have been different, but they were just, they just didn’t try and sort out their differences, I think, with poor little Nina. 

Follow the true story of Frederick and Vida—a young couple whose love and struggles played out against the backdrop of war and family conflict. Blossom by Margaret Kinton is available now on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com and there are links to it in the shows notes. 

Thanks for listening to this edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com.

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