The fascinating story of Kerryn Phelps, controversial head of the Australian Medical Association, and her remarkable and very public marriage to Jackie Stricker.
Kerryn Phelps is the controversial head of the Australian Medical Association. Jackie Stricker is Kerryn's wife and executive assistant - a former teacher at a Sydney private girls school whose teaching career was ended when the couple were outed by a tabloid newspaper. This is a frank and fascinating account of their life together.
Kerryn & Jackie is about crossing every line this society has set for good middle-class girls to stay behind: be nice and not too bright, stay calm and don't attract attention. It chronicles Kerryn's first marriage, the birth of her children and her eventual coming out as gay.
It recounts the story of their marriage ceremony in New York, Kerryn's conversion to Judaism, and her struggle to get to the top of the very conservative AMA. It does not shrink from the personal, exploring their hopes for a baby and the seemingly irreparable rift between Kerryn and Jackie and the Phelps family.
Kerryn & Jackie is about being publicly and proudly gay, it's about women in politics, and it's about living your life fearlessly in the goldfish bowl of public life.
