Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under

Biographies & Memoirs

By Anne R. Williams

Publisher : Pearlsong Press

ABOUT Anne R. Williams

Anne R. Williams
Anne Richardson Williams graduated in 1969 from Vanderbilt University/Peabody College with a BFA in printmaking and painting. While owning and running a conservation framers/art gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, she continued to experiment and work with many different  More...

Description

Shattered by family tragedy in the early 1960s, an upper-middle-class Southern teenager finds solace in art and literature. Decades later, she is called to the continent whose literature comforted her, and to a magical connection with an Aboriginal woman transcending race and half a world.

Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under contains Aborginal traditional stories as told by Lorraine Mafi-Williams. Interior artwork by Anne R. Williams.
"Anne Williams has written an intelligent, lyrical and inspirational tale about her excursion into the outbacks of Australia and of her soul. The true story of her pilgrimage is beautifully and directly told, creating a literary roadmap of trust that readers might learn how one soul navigated unconventional -- but vital -- pathways forward."

Steven McFadden
author, Legend of the Rainbow Warriors
Director, Chiron Communications

A Great Read!

"Anne Richardson Williams crafts a beautiful memoir and invites the reader to accompany her as she embarks upon an extraordinary journey that takes her both to Australia and her own inner knowing. In her quest to meet Lorraine Mafi-Williams, an Aboriginal Elder with whom she's never met yet feels a deep connection, Anne Williams relies on her heart and her inner wisdom as a guiding compass and is rewarded with finding not only the Australian woman she seeks and the stories she carries, but also with a fuller sense of coming home to herself. A wonderful and inspiring story!"

Ellen Frankel
Aurhor of
Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature & Inner Growth

A beautiful word picture by a true artist

"When you were a little girl, did you ever dream of traveling to a place you read about in a book? Anne Richardson Williams did exactly that. When she was sixteen, she read A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. She was grieving her father's suicide at the time and books were her refuge. She wrote in her diary that one day she would like to visit Alice Springs, Australia, the town where the novel takes place.

"Twenty-six years later, in 1989, she found her old journal and contemplated her girlish dream, as yet unrealized. By then, Williams had been an artist and a successful businesswoman. After her divorce, she began to explore her spirituality and to meditate. One day she saw a calendar picture of Ayers Rock in the Australian desert and discovered "the closest town of any size, across two hundred miles of desert, is Alice Springs." This is just the first of many serendipitous and mysterious events that bring Williams on her journey. While reading Steven McFadden's Ancient Vioices, Current Affairs: The Legend of the Rainbow Warriors, she sees a photograph of Lorraine Mafi-Williams, an Aboriginal elder, and believes she looks like her; she feels her a sister, even with the same last name, and decides to meet the woman. And that's where the book takes us down a path quite different from the typical woman's 'journey'....

"For anyone who is curious about Australia, this easy-to-read travel journal will be a treat. The author paints with her words a fascinating country, one most will never see....

"The author includes a bibliography and glossary of terms for those who want to investigate further this intriguing place and 'unconventional means' of following one's spiritual path.'"

Linda C. Wisniewski
Author of
Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, & Her Polish Heritage