This short novel seems to be based on the real life Kelly Gang of robbers, horse thieves and bootleggers. Kate Kelly is the younger sister of the leader, Ned Kelly, and is in love with gang member Joe Byrnes. Witnessing his violent death as a teenager, she is never able to really get over Joe. Her life becomes a series of relationships with inappropriate men, and menial jobs. Even her eventual marriage cannot erase the tragedy of losing Joe, and we watch her slowly destroy herself. This is a powerful story about the impact of loss, at a time when little support was available for survivors of violence. ( )

Sister Kate, by Jean Bedford, is a slim novella from 1982, fictionalising the life of Kate Kelly, the sister of the bushranger Ned Kelly. It is no accident that the cover is graced by Sidney Nolan’s painting ‘Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly‘: Fitzpatrick’s womanising is said to have been the catalyst for Ned Kelly’s life of violent crime.

But the exploits of the Kelly Gang are not the focus of this novel. It is the effects on the women of the family that is of interest. Kate is a wild child who hero-worships her brother and believes he can do no wrong, and when by page 61 it is all over for the gang, she is left with only a demoralised brother, a mother broken by the demise of her two sons and the memory of her first love, Joe Byrne, who was shot and killed in the shootout at Glenrowan.

With nothing left but bitter memories Kate tries to make a new life. She has a stint as a barmaid, becomes an assistant to a showman who breaks in horses, and finally meets her eventual husband Bill while she is working as a domestic. Throughout this period she has been supported by a sisterhood of sorts: they are tough women with problems of their own but they care for her when she succumbs to consumption (TB) and although they have always tactfully pretended not to know who she really is, it is they who get help from the remnants of her family when things reach crisis point.

Bill’s not a bad fellow but he’s entirely inadequate to support a woman suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Kate is haunted by the image of Joe’s burnt body on grotesque display at the Benalla Police Station, and she takes to drugs and drink to try to forget. And as she sinks further and further into a fantasy world where Joe has come back to her, her neglect of her little children shows how criminality impacts on one generation to the next.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2013/03/09/sister-kate-by-jean-bedford/ ( )