Book excerpt: Republished for a new generation of readers, this extraordinary autobiography of one of Australia's most celebrated female writers, Dorothy Hewett, traces the personal and political metamorphoses of her first 35 years. After university life, several failed love affairs, an attempted suicide, and a major poetry prize, Dorothy Hewett joined the Australian Communist party in 1945. Four years later, she left her husband and moved to Redfern, Sydney with her lover, a boilermaker. Hers was a life of extremes - the pleasures and purgatories of a woman who has tackled everything placed in her path with a searing honesty, energy, and intellect.