Although this book is less than 100 pages long, it manages to capture the struggles of a young Italian girl as she battles parent expectation versus her own needs to be independent. Lisdalia is a gifted child struggling against her father's wish for her to serve her older brothers and himself just as her mother has done. But Lisdalia is a child of modern Australia, and she doesn't subscribe to the post-war subserviency of her mother's generation, much to her father's chagrin. Then her father becomes very ill and Lisdalia must look inside herself to see whether her principles are indeed worth fighing for. A well-written book with multiple character narratives. This is the second book after "Mike" but I hadn't read "Mike" and I still understood what was happening. Very good for migrant, feminist issues