Praying for Sunlight, Waiting for Rain: A New Guinea story

Ellen Starck, a young South Australian from a privileged background, shares the prejudices of her society about native peoples. Her initial experience of the newly 'discovered' New Guinea highlands, in which she arrives in 1937 as the wife of a Lutheran missionary, does little to change her mind.

She begins by marking time, hoping her husband will soon tire of his missionary work, but she gradually ventures beyond the meagre European society around her into the highland world-especially the...