Walk On

The remarkable true story of the last person sentenced to death in Australia.

In 2003, at her home in Geraldton, Western Australia, Brenda Hodge, 53, picked up the phone and found herself talking to her sister in Sydney - a woman she had never heard of. Carole Baxter told Brenda that she also had a second sister who lived in Melbourne.

In turn Brenda told Carole that in 1995 she had been released from gaol after nearly twelve years. That in 1984 she had been sentenced to death.

Carole flew west to meet Brenda, to exchange stories of what they knew of their mother, and to hear Brenda's story. Walk On is that story.

It begins to take its awful shape when Brenda is raped. She was four. It was the first chapter of a history of sexual abuse - her mother sold her to men - that continued throughout her young life. Along the way she escaped from state institutions to roam the country, often in trouble and always in flight, until, working as an outback roadhouse cook, she met Peter, the man she was later to shoot dead.

Brenda Hodge ran away at thirteen, but as an adult in prison she began to study seriously for the first time in her life. She topped the state in English before graduating with an arts degree. She is, say her tutors, one of the most gifted students they have known. Her poetry, some of which is included in this book, has been published and highly praised.

Today, Brenda Hodge has found the growing love of two sisters. And, finally, she has found peace.

Walk On is one of the most absorbing, disturbing and - ultimately - uplifting true Australian stories published in more than a decade.