The Reverend Dorothy McRae-McMahon’s life has been truly remarkable. Her wonderfully evocative memoirs begin with growing up in drought-stricken country Victoria, part of a big, rambling family with a domineering mother and wise but distant Methodist minister father. Theirs was very much a typical Australian life.
In her late teens, with little experience of the world, Dorothy met Barrie McMahon and they soon married and settled in the outskirts of Melbourne to begin what appeared to be a typical suburban existence. However, immediately after the birth of their second child two events shattered Dorothy’s world. Her two-year-old son was diagnosed with severe autism and her beloved younger sister was killed in a car accident.
While these two things would have stopped many people in their tracks, they are but two of many seemingly insurmountable events in Dorothy’s life. Her ability to rise above such adversity will inspire every reader. Dorothy is well known internationally as a minister in the Uniting Church and her memoirs contain fascinating tales of this world, from her ordination to travels in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and becoming the first woman to be a moderator of the World Council Worship Committee.
Dorothy is also something of a gay icon. After embracing her sexuality at the age of fifty, Dorothy has now found the love of her life, Ali. She is brutally honest about how she dealt with the late-in-life realisation that she was a lesbian and the effect this had on her marriage, her children and her life in the church, including the attacks she suffered at the hands of a neo-Nazi group.