Three Seasons (Jane Hansen, Macmillan, $32.95 pb, ISBN 9781405038119,October) ****

Jane Hansen is best known for her journalism and work as a foreign correspondent around the world for Australia’s major television networks, particularly covering war zones and political situations. Hansen has written a memoir that details her successful career in the context of her life but it is largely about her attempts to become a mother. Like many, Hansen thought that she could have it all and motherhood would just happen when she had time to slot it in. She miscarried and then had a premature baby who died after eight-and-a-half months of health battle after battle. Hansen uses this memoir to heal some grief over this death and it is a very tragic story she has to tell. Hansen and her husband then went on to have a healthy baby boy. This is a marvelous and inspiring parenting memoir that really shares the pains and joys of motherhood. It is ideal for any parents, particularly mothers, as well as those preparing for parenthood—showing the triumphs and possible heartache that parenting can bring. Hansen writes very well and it is a really easy book to read and cry with.

Melanie Barton is fiction category manager at Angus & Robertson

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker