The Year of the Beast

The final novel in the Glenroy stories (and a 'prequel' to 'The art of the engine driver' published in 2001). It's Melbourne, 1917. Maryanne is a schoolteacher, an unmarried woman, who defies the church and society by keeping her baby rather than giving it up for adoption. Meanwhile, the Great War is raging, and there is about to be a second referendum for compulsory conscription.