BOOK LAUNCH IN NELSON

John Ewan’s book about his late wife, The Audrey Story: from back country to Beehive and beyond,  will be launched at Page & Blackmore Booksellers, 254 Trafalgar Street, Nelson, on Tuesday 5 February at 5.30 pm.

The book is not about breaking gender barriers or smashing glass ceilings, leveraging degrees or knowing the right people. Audrey’s approach to life was simply to have a go and just keep trying. This attitude took her from her home on a farm in outback Nelson, through teaching jobs in Tapawara,  Hunterville, Taihape and Palmerston North.  She then became a journalist for the Manawatu Standard and later one of New Zealand’s first woman Parliamentary Press Officers.

After successive terms as press officer for several Cabinet Ministers, she left the Beehive to become a reporter with the Evening Post (now the Dompost). She was appointed the bureau chief for the Hutt office and became the paper’s resident correspondent for the Kapiti and Horowhenua areas. Ill health led to an early retirement and a subsequent shift back to Nelson where she continued to write – human interest articles for a local farming newspaper, and book reviews and travel features for the Nelson Mail.

‘She left a lot of stories unpublished and many of them have been in-corporated into the book,’ John Ewan says.  These include childhood memories, life in the Beehive and an overseas trip where she was wrongly accused of harbouring a stowaway aboard ship.

 The book is published by Chateau Publishing Ltd and distributed by Bookreps NZ. Phone 03-548 9992 to reserve a copy.