The Pearlsong Letter

Story Circle Network review of Anne Richardson William's Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under

Linda Wisniewski has reviewed Anne Richardson William's memoir Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under at The Story Circle Network. Wisniewski writes that Unconventional Means published by Pearlsong Press in 2005)  "takes us down a path quite different from the typical woman's 'journey.'"

When you were a little girl, did you ever dream of traveling to a place you read about in a book? Anne Richardson Williams did exactly that. When she was sixteen, she read A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. She was grieving her father's suicide at the time, and books were her refuge. She wrote in her diary that one day she would like to visit Alice Springs, Australia, the town where the novel takes place.

Twenty-six years later, in 1989, she found her old journal and contemplated her girlish dream, as yet unrealized....After her divorce, she began to explore her spirituality and to meditate. One day she saw a calendar picture of Ayers Rock in the Australian desert and discovered 'the closest town of any size, across two hundred miles of desert, is Alice Springs." This is just the first of many serendipitous and mysterious events that bring Williams on her journey.

Read the entire review here.

Coming soon from Pearlsong Press....Unconventional Means by Anne Richardson Williams

Coming in June 2005...

Sixteen-year-old Anne Williams, shattered by a family tragedy, tries to cope through art and reading. She eventually finds solace in Nevil Shute's novel A Town Like Alice. His heroine's passage through the tribulations of war to find love and a new home modeled after the town of Alice Springs, Australia gives teenage Anne hope that "there is something on the other side of the terrible things" for her, too. Some day, she promises herself, she will go to Australia and to Alice Springs.

Decades later, Anne's call to Australia deepens. Now an artist and successful businesswoman, she is reading a book about the continent's Aboriginal people when a photograph of Aboriginal elder Lorraine Mafi-Williams mesmerizes her. She feels an immediate kinship, even though others find it ridiculous that this upper-middle-class Southern white woman and an Aboriginal elder could share more than a common last name.

When Anne finally sets out for Australia, she adds to her desire to see Alice Springs the dream of meeting Lorraine. But with no address, no phone number, no conventional way to get in touch with an Aboriginal woman, Anne must rely on unconventional means -- dreams, visions, meditation and intuition -- to guide her halfway across the world to find the woman whose ancient stories of a land and its people will help heal her.

Pearlsong Press is proud to publish this second edition of Unconventional Means, revised and updated from the 2000 In Circle Press edition.