Publisher's Synopsis
Owenie grew up in the West Australian Goldfields in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a girl of indomitable spirit and in spite of being abused sexually, by physical violence and emotionally by neglect, rose above it all to be a strong-minded teenager who broke free of her surroundings. As an adult she even gave back to society by becoming a telephone counsellor for Australia's largest telephone counselling service, with a special ability to support and challenge men with alcohol problems. The author first met her when he was managing a branch of the telephone counselling organisation (Lifeline Perth) and was bewildered by her erratic bouts of anger. The author's own experiences are interwoven in separate chapters with Owenie's story. They tell how he, in his pastoral care role and later as a counsellor, dealt with his own reactions to working with an increasing number of perpetrators and victims of child abuse.
