It seemed almost natural, since the women’s movement was helping us imagine we could have the same opportunities as men. I used money from a fellowship grant to buy a one-way ticket from Seattle to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The French photojournalist Catherine Leroy, inspired by photos of the war she had seen in Paris Match, arrived in Vietnam as a freelancer. Jurate Kazickas went on the quiz show “Password” to win the $500 she needed for her ticket to Saigon. Kate quit her newspaper job and flew to Saigon from Sydney U.P.I. Instead, we had to find our own way to the battle zone. Reporters like Kate and me didn’t go to Vietnam because of enlightened decisions by newsrooms in the 1960s, news organizations weren’t sending women to cover the most important story of our generation. Female reporters covered that war, rewriting the rules so that the phrase “woman war correspondent” would never again be an oxymoron. It is a reproduction of a famous photo of Kate wearing a reporter’s shirt, holding open her notebook while looking intently at the subject of an interview.īy recognizing Kate, who covered the Vietnam War for United Press International, as a “woman in war,” the stamp quietly acknowledges what has been glossed over in the annals of the conflict. This year Australia put the journalist Kate Webb on a stamp to commemorate the country’s Veterans Day. But as everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus's empty throne - not yet. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus.

None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women - and their goddesses - that will change the course of the world.'The greatest power we women can own is that which we take in secret.'Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the isle of Ithaca.

Beyond Ithaca's shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. 'Claire North brings a powerful, fresh and unflinching voice to ancient myth - darkly fascinating, raw and breathtaking' Jennifer Saint, author of Sunday Times bestseller Ariadne***A Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of the Year***This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before.

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