SOURCE: A review of The Road from Coorain, in Christian Century, Vol. 106, No. 28, October 4, 1989, p. 894.

In the following review, the critic offers a positive assessment of The Road from Coorain.

This autobiography [The Road from Coorain] by the Australian-born historian later to be president of Smith College is a standard for the genre. Conway is a beautiful stylist, reflective yet restrained in her consideration of her early years on a western Australia sheep ranch (she never met another girl-child until she was seven), her school years in Sidney, and the years spent coming to realize her vocation. She describes, without indulging in psychologizing, the trauma of losing her father and oldest brother to death and her mother to frustration and despair, and treats without rancor the development of her feminism. One discovers that stoicism and restraint are part of the Australian temperament to an extent that we Americans...