Many Australians know and admire Miles Franklin. Her famous book, ‘My Brilliant Career’ (1901) is a national treasure. That novel follows the experiences of the rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn and her journey to independence in a patriarchal society. Her book later became a movie and since the 1950s there is an annual award in her name to celebrate Australian literary excellence.

Therefore it was with great anticipation that Kerrie’s book has just been released this month. In this real-life sequel to ‘My Brilliant Career’, she uncovers a little-known period in Miles life drawing on a never-before published manuscript and diary extracts of Miles year undercover as a servant, intimate correspondence with poet Banjo Paterson, and archival sources from Australia and Chicago.

When the original book was published it earned very little and her later novels were rejected. Two years after publication Miles was broke and disappeared. This is a tale of her continued strength as she was determined to still be the heroine of her own story. Kerrie does an amazing job in capturing Miles voice in this creative bio fiction of her life until 1915.

This book follows Miles Franklin’s life from 1901 (when My Brilliant Career was published) to 1915. During this time she spends a year working as a servant in a few different places, the book she writes is unprintable as many of the rich people she mentions are clearly identifiable! A few years later she travels to the US. She arrives in San Francisco in 1906 two weeks after a massive earthquake has destroyed the city. From there she travels to Chicago and becomes involved in women’s trade Union activities and other women’s rights issues. This was such a great read, I really enjoyed reading about this fascinating and fiercely independent woman.

What an absolute treat. Miles Franklin, the lost years is a beautifully researched book that unpacks the life of such an important Australian writer. There are , of course, many biographies of Stella Miles Franklin but none that seem so completely in sync with who she was and the times that she lived through. Her success, whilst immediate with My Brilliant Career was not always easy after that. Her relationship with Henry Lawson and other literary figures reads as if told by Miles herself. She was determined to not to marry and passionate to support the rights of women in so many ways in Australia, the United States and London. Her Undercover work as a servant in Sydney and Melbourne are fascinating documents of the treatment of women in the early 1900s. Her little known time in America is poignant as she carts her unpublished manuscripts in her case as she moves around finally finding work in editing a Labour Journal. Her own family’s tragedy with the death of her sister , a letter sent to her contains such terrible news are all beautifully portrayed by Kerrie Davies. It ends all too suddenly with a coda. I wish there had been more.

This novel contains lots of fascinating facts and details about a specific time in Miles Franklin's life. Davies has obviously done her research and has turned everything she has read and learnt into a fictionalised account of Franklin's life. Even though it include many extracts and lines from real-life letters and journals, this is biofiction not a biography or non-fiction,

The mismatch between my expectations for a literary biography and the biofiction to hand affected the way I read this book, which I probably would have enjoyed a whole lot more if I had started it with 'biofiction' or even 'creative nonfiction' in mind.