Jean Devanny (1894 – 1962)  – author, political activist, and women’s liberationist – was a leading figure in Australia’s political and literary life. In the turbulent political climate of the 1930s, Devanny joined the Communist Party and rapidly became a redoubtable public speaker. A fiery figure, she clashed with the party line on events in Europe during World War II and under Stalin and had bitter disputes with party leaders over her “open” marriage and rumored love affairs. Obliged to write novels to support her family, she developed friendships with notable writers Katharine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin, and Frank Hardy. Her interest in issues of race, gender and sexuality makes her a writer of great contemporary interest. In this volume she writes of the men and women who live and work on the Queensland coast, in the steaming rain forests, in the cane fields and in the mines.  They are people who never dreamed they would be an author’s hero or heroine, yet they are; Devanny understood the significance of the many humble lives and the part they played in the overall scheme of our national existence and has here drawn wonderful character studies and ‘yarns’.