A Place to Call Home: The Story of How a TV Series Stirred Passions and Connections

A Place To Call Home begins on a ship when a nurse--Sister Adams by name--works her passage home to Australia to console her mother who is grieving for a son killed in the Korean War. Estranged from her family, she stands before the welcome mat, fearful of what she will find inside and wondering whether her mother will accept her despite a breach of decades. Several minutes into their reunion, the mother tells her daughter to leave because she cannot reconcile with a child, born a Catholic, who is now--a Jew.On the ship, Sister Adams is asked to care for the matriarch [Elizabeth Bligh] of a wealthy landed family returning to Australia with son and granddaughter as well as with newly wedded grandson and his wife, a marriage intended to blunt his desire for sexual relations with men. Acutely conscious of the privileges bestowed on the Bligh family, matriarch Elizabeth also embraces a set of traditions coiled around a social structure that is expected to ensure stability from the particul