The heroine of this story is nameless. The fact that she is without a name, makes her plight even more poignant. It is written by a man who acknowledges all the women who have ever had to survive with their children in the Aussie outback, American frontier, the Canadian prairie, or any other lonesome, godforsaken place on earth. Some went insane. Others committed suicide. And still others, like this character, rose above the heart-stopping fear, the gut-wrenching sorrow and the crushing solitude. Lawson, perhaps because of his own very difficult life, was able to capture a woman's essential nature in a dire predicament with eloquence and sensitivity.