For 15 years, Angie Oakley of Noosa Heads has felt she should write the history of her family. Now, 133,000 words later, the feeling has morphed into a novel and has just been published.
Next month she will sign copies of the immensely readable blockbuster at Annie’s Bookshop at Peregian Beach, content that The Porcelain House is the sort of book, as she told Noosa Today, “I love to read — a story of ordinary people caught up in the crosswinds of World War Two that swept through their lives leaving them to pick up the pieces.”
While the book has its origin in her own family, Angie says it was a “mixture of fact and fiction”.
During the war, thousands of Australians went to England to join the fight against Nazism. Among them was Bill Howard, a young Queenslander who found himself in that most risky of jobs – a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber.
Angie’s father, Lieutenant Tom Waldron, befriended Bill, brought him to his home in London and introduced him to his younger sister, Doreen
Angie said: “A romance blossomed and promises were made but the war that brought them together was to deal a lasting and damaging blow to the young couple.
“It set in train a tragic story that has stretched down the years from the war to the present day, and from England to Australia.
“I knew these people. I was a young witness to the way events played out, and this gave me the impetus to tell their story which unfolds down generations and across the world.”
She grew up in central London and has drawn on vivid memories to recreate post-war life in that city where a sudden space in a terrace of houses – “like a missing tooth” – testified to the bombing endured by her fellow Londoners.
She said many of the characters – her family –were not difficult to bring to life. After the war her father was a writer and producer for the BBC, and she still remembers the clacking of his old Remington typewriter echoing through their little London flat.
“It wasn’t much of leap for me to move from a Remington to a Mac and carry on the family tradition.
She said her book wasn’t just a tale with plot and character.
“For me, it became vital to set down these family stories and record their lives before they disappeared into the past, unmarked and unremembered.
“My sister and I are the only ones left who knew these people – their courage and fortitude, as well as their laughter and song, and their love of a good party. If someone doesn’t commit it to print, it’s gone forever.”
Angie, a former teacher of English, came to Australia with husband Bob in the late ’70s and lived in Daylesford, Victoria and Brisbane before coming to Noosa about 10 years ago.
She loves to travel and sings with Noosa Chorale.
She is a member of the choir’s publicity team.
The Porcelain House has already had favourable reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
Angie will be at Annie’s Books on Peregian on Saturday 11 June between 10am and noon, happy to chat and sign her book.
