Forced into adoption and taken in by a violent household, the course of Jill Jolliffe's life was set before she had time to choose. She ran away as a teen and has been running ever since.

Jolliffe became a thorn in the establishment's side and earned herself a hefty ASIO file in the process. Following her instincts, she became a foreign correspondent risking her life to report on Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, exposing sex-trafficking rackets in Portugal, and ducking bullets while covering a war in Angola.

In time she came to realise that the recurring pattern of her career was telling the stories of young women in distress, as though bidding to free her younger self from the chains of being a 'Forgotten Australian'. In the course of writing her memoir, an unexpected meeting with her birth mother completes the circle of her past.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 312-314) and index.