The House that Was Eureka: Text Classics
Text Classics
Nadia Wheatley
Introduction by Toni Jordan
It’s 1981 and Evie is sixteen. She has left school but can’t find work, and her family has just moved into the run-down inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. Noel lives in the adjoining terrace house. He’s fifteen, not taking school seriously and fed up with looking after his ancient bed-ridden grandmother.
As a friendship grows between Evie and Noel, the past is set back in motion, and the events of the 1930s Depression era begin to play out in the high-unemployment times of the early 1980s, and the house again is the centre of the Sydney anti-eviction campaign of 1931.
Based on historical fact, meticulously researched, The House that Was Eureka is a critically acclaimed novel about a history we all share.
Read Toni Jordan’s thoughtful introduction to this wonderful classic.
andThe House that Was Eureka
‘Wheatley’s book has urgency and a fierce strength…The characters from both eras are “alive and flying”, freedom fighters who are aware that they are making history.'
‘An exceptional book…The House that was Eureka will establish itself as a classic in adolescent fiction.’
‘A fine piece of work, well researched and beautifully plotted around the Depression when people were tipped out of their houses by landlords and unemployed men took to the roads with swags.’
‘An absorbing and wholly convincing recreation of the Depression of the 1930s, with the traumatic experiences of the Cruise family, destitute and threatened with eviction, running parallel to the problems of today.’
‘Wheatley weaves in the forgotten true story of a labour riot in the 1930s, including the marginalised experience of women, and shows the similarities and differences of unemployment and its consequences in the past and present. It suits as a text for English and history.’
