In England, in the spring of 1939, Clancy, an Australian nurse, waits with her infant daughter for news of her lover, who was a volunteer with the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. As she waits, Clancy shares with her daughter the story of her own childhood in the Australian bush and her disastrous marriage to an English archaeologist. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Clancy volunteered on the Republican side. Her chance for happiness amid the chaos came when she met the young Canadian Douglas Ross. She has not heard from him since the final desperate offensive.
The fourth work of fiction by the award-winning Australian-Canadian writer Gayla Reid, Come from Afar is a sweeping historical story of personal and political struggle.