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The Framing
Mum handed me some papers. 'Here's the brief of evidence if you want to read it.'
Brief of evidence?
This was a surprise.
I retreated to the study to peruse it. Two bank tellers gave statements describing the person who had completed a fraudulent transaction. Blonde, overweight, in her twenties. My mother was forty-five, slim, and was sometimes asked if she was Greek or Italian.
Another witness statement, equally inconclusive. A receipt for payment for three CDs and a bunch of other random documents.
Those cops had just collected bits of paper and called it evidence. Any jury would be able to see this did not prove anything.
When Fernanda Dahlstrom was eight, her mother went to jail and their idyllic life in rural Victoria was shattered. Now a young lawyer in Darwin, Fernanda tells her new partner about her chaotic past and her determination to show the world how her mother was framed. The Framing explores the complexities of trust and betrayal in family relationships, through a searing study of identity and justice.
Brief of evidence?
This was a surprise.
I retreated to the study to peruse it. Two bank tellers gave statements describing the person who had completed a fraudulent transaction. Blonde, overweight, in her twenties. My mother was forty-five, slim, and was sometimes asked if she was Greek or Italian.
Another witness statement, equally inconclusive. A receipt for payment for three CDs and a bunch of other random documents.
Those cops had just collected bits of paper and called it evidence. Any jury would be able to see this did not prove anything.
When Fernanda Dahlstrom was eight, her mother went to jail and their idyllic life in rural Victoria was shattered. Now a young lawyer in Darwin, Fernanda tells her new partner about her chaotic past and her determination to show the world how her mother was framed. The Framing explores the complexities of trust and betrayal in family relationships, through a searing study of identity and justice.
256 pages, Paperback
Published April 14, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 27, 2026
A really fascinating memoir about the gap between childhood understanding and reality, the bond between mother and daughter and how it can go wrong, trauma and how society treats children and young people. There was some really good writing and interesting stylistic choices in this book too which was original and refreshing.
October 16, 2026
THE FRAMING (Melbourne University Press 2026) is an interesting memoir by Fernanda Dahlstrom, an Asian/Australian writer of Swedish heritage. Now a lawyer in the Northern Territory, through a series of loosely connected memories Dahlstrom attempts to excavate her turbulent childhood and adolescence and examine what happened to her – and the peripatetic life she led with her single mother – through her freshly adult eyes of a university education, life experience, and conversations with her partner.
When Dahlstrom was only eight years old, her mother was sent to prison and their ‘idyllic life in rural Victoria was shattered’. The story of what happened to her, and how she survived over the ensuing decade is almost unbelievable. Staying with random family members, foster placements, and most disturbing of all, living alone in her house at only 11 years old, paying bills from a seemingly bottomless joint account with her mother, getting herself to school and even flying overseas as a minor – all of these things and more comprise her most unusual and eccentric childhood.
Throughout this entire time, she believes her mother is innocent. She has been framed. Her mother tells her this every time she is convicted of another offence and spends more time behind bars. Her mother shows her evidence of corrupt police officers and judiciary members from all around Australia determined to bring an innocent woman down. Dahlstrom may be young but she’s smart, with her book learning much advanced beyond her years. She believes her mother because her mother is so credible and provides so much evidence. But what the author tells us in the first two thirds of the book seems impossible and unbelievable – where is all the money coming from? Why would child services not act in a more proactive way? How on earth does a child that young survive on her own? But it is all explained, as much as Dahlstrom can construct from her (admittedly sometimes conflicted or confused) memories, or from her reconstructed and possibly misinterpreted versions of the truth she was given at the time.
She and her mother share an unbreakable bond. They are co-dependent and enmeshed (a fact Dahlstrom cannot admit until much later). They are Thelma and Louise. The team of two. Inseparable emotionally (if not always physically) despite the odds. The life they lead in between her mother’s prison stints is fantastical – overseas trips, owning several houses, going on adventures, shopping, eating out, living the life of Riley. At the age of eight or 10 or even 12, who would question how this life is possible? Dahlstrom is her mother’s greatest ally, believes in her wholeheartedly and is her proudest defender.
Most of the book consists of a series of memories or reconstructed events from her childhood which did become a little confusing at times. I felt a stronger edit might have resulted in a more chronological timeline. The story jumps from the present to the past to the more recent past. But perhaps this was the author’s intention – to demonstrate the chaotic nature of her upbringing.
It all comes together in the last quarter when Dahlstrom – older and wiser – begins to doubt the knowledge she has always accepted as perfect truth. She begins to research, to google her mother (close friends with Judith Durham! Then charged as stalking her as the friendship dissipated! Police reports in full when as a child she’d only seen parts. Newspaper articles about her notorious mother. Reconnecting with estranged family members and reading old letters that tell a different story than her mother has always espoused.)
As she tries to navigate life, love, sexuality, work and self-identity, her relationship with her mother becomes more complicated, swinging back and forth from no contact to an enmeshed closeness.
But what is the truth? Was her mother framed? Every time? Or is she mentally ill? Or did she spend all those years lying to her only daughter? By the end of the book, even Dahlstrom herself is still unsure. Her mother is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. An intelligent woman with energy and pluck, daring and self-confidence. Did she instil those same qualities in her daughter or did she emotionally damage her through benign or outright neglect?
Some sections, particularly the memory sections, could have done with some tightening up, and the author could perhaps have been a bit more judicial with what she chose to include or not include; there are quite minor and insignificant memories mixed with significant life events. But again, perhaps that’s the point: when you’re a child, how do you know what is crucial and what is not? How do you differentiate? How are you expected to make adult decisions as a 10-year-old?
If you are interested in children living adult lives, resilient children by expectation not by choice, intellectually curious children, female incarceration (and especially the organisation Sisters Inside), mother/daughter bonds, the legal and justice system, or just a highly unusual coming-of-age memoir, then this book will resonate. It is one of the strangest childhood upbringings I have read about and if it is all true (not doubting Dahlstrom but as she says herself, she realises she may doubt her own childhood memories, or the truth of what she accepted as a child, now as an adult), it is certainly an extraordinary story.
When Dahlstrom was only eight years old, her mother was sent to prison and their ‘idyllic life in rural Victoria was shattered’. The story of what happened to her, and how she survived over the ensuing decade is almost unbelievable. Staying with random family members, foster placements, and most disturbing of all, living alone in her house at only 11 years old, paying bills from a seemingly bottomless joint account with her mother, getting herself to school and even flying overseas as a minor – all of these things and more comprise her most unusual and eccentric childhood.
Throughout this entire time, she believes her mother is innocent. She has been framed. Her mother tells her this every time she is convicted of another offence and spends more time behind bars. Her mother shows her evidence of corrupt police officers and judiciary members from all around Australia determined to bring an innocent woman down. Dahlstrom may be young but she’s smart, with her book learning much advanced beyond her years. She believes her mother because her mother is so credible and provides so much evidence. But what the author tells us in the first two thirds of the book seems impossible and unbelievable – where is all the money coming from? Why would child services not act in a more proactive way? How on earth does a child that young survive on her own? But it is all explained, as much as Dahlstrom can construct from her (admittedly sometimes conflicted or confused) memories, or from her reconstructed and possibly misinterpreted versions of the truth she was given at the time.
She and her mother share an unbreakable bond. They are co-dependent and enmeshed (a fact Dahlstrom cannot admit until much later). They are Thelma and Louise. The team of two. Inseparable emotionally (if not always physically) despite the odds. The life they lead in between her mother’s prison stints is fantastical – overseas trips, owning several houses, going on adventures, shopping, eating out, living the life of Riley. At the age of eight or 10 or even 12, who would question how this life is possible? Dahlstrom is her mother’s greatest ally, believes in her wholeheartedly and is her proudest defender.
Most of the book consists of a series of memories or reconstructed events from her childhood which did become a little confusing at times. I felt a stronger edit might have resulted in a more chronological timeline. The story jumps from the present to the past to the more recent past. But perhaps this was the author’s intention – to demonstrate the chaotic nature of her upbringing.
It all comes together in the last quarter when Dahlstrom – older and wiser – begins to doubt the knowledge she has always accepted as perfect truth. She begins to research, to google her mother (close friends with Judith Durham! Then charged as stalking her as the friendship dissipated! Police reports in full when as a child she’d only seen parts. Newspaper articles about her notorious mother. Reconnecting with estranged family members and reading old letters that tell a different story than her mother has always espoused.)
As she tries to navigate life, love, sexuality, work and self-identity, her relationship with her mother becomes more complicated, swinging back and forth from no contact to an enmeshed closeness.
But what is the truth? Was her mother framed? Every time? Or is she mentally ill? Or did she spend all those years lying to her only daughter? By the end of the book, even Dahlstrom herself is still unsure. Her mother is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. An intelligent woman with energy and pluck, daring and self-confidence. Did she instil those same qualities in her daughter or did she emotionally damage her through benign or outright neglect?
Some sections, particularly the memory sections, could have done with some tightening up, and the author could perhaps have been a bit more judicial with what she chose to include or not include; there are quite minor and insignificant memories mixed with significant life events. But again, perhaps that’s the point: when you’re a child, how do you know what is crucial and what is not? How do you differentiate? How are you expected to make adult decisions as a 10-year-old?
If you are interested in children living adult lives, resilient children by expectation not by choice, intellectually curious children, female incarceration (and especially the organisation Sisters Inside), mother/daughter bonds, the legal and justice system, or just a highly unusual coming-of-age memoir, then this book will resonate. It is one of the strangest childhood upbringings I have read about and if it is all true (not doubting Dahlstrom but as she says herself, she realises she may doubt her own childhood memories, or the truth of what she accepted as a child, now as an adult), it is certainly an extraordinary story.
July 13, 2026
Today is the first day of school holidays for me, traditionally a day where I don’t set an alarm and plan to have a big sleep in to recover from the long school term. But this morning I naturally woke up at 6am and rather than try to go back to sleep, I rolled over and picked up this book because I just had to know what happened next.
The Framing by Fernanda Dahlstrom was not a book that I sought out. A few weeks ago, I got a message on Instagram from the author asking me if I’d be willing to review her recently released memoir. I did a quick google and thought, yep, there are things in this memoir that sound interesting to me. As a teacher who has spent my entire career working with young people who have experienced significant trauma, the information available to me at the time about Fernanda’s story certainly piqued my interest. And readers: the story was wilder than even I was expecting.
As a child, Fernanda’s life was repeatedly impacted by the crimes of her mother, who spent a considerable amount of time behind bars on charges of fraud and robbery. Throughout Fernanda’s formative years, her mother insisted she was innocent and the target of a plot by various police departments to continually have her do time for crimes she did not commit. As a child, Fernanda believed her mother. As an adult, she saw what she could not as a child.
The memoir does not read like a book written by a woman who wants everyone to see and hear the ongoing traumatic experience she had growing up in order to gain people’s sympathy. This memoir reads like the story of an incredibly bright woman who has spent a lot of time making sense of the circumstances in which she grew up, and I get the feeling that writing all of this down was probably a big part of how she understood her childhood through the lens of adulthood. She isn’t asking anyone to feel sorry for her. She turned out just fine. But holy heck, what this lady went through growing up is going to stay with me for a long time.
The Framing by Fernanda Dahlstrom was not a book that I sought out. A few weeks ago, I got a message on Instagram from the author asking me if I’d be willing to review her recently released memoir. I did a quick google and thought, yep, there are things in this memoir that sound interesting to me. As a teacher who has spent my entire career working with young people who have experienced significant trauma, the information available to me at the time about Fernanda’s story certainly piqued my interest. And readers: the story was wilder than even I was expecting.
As a child, Fernanda’s life was repeatedly impacted by the crimes of her mother, who spent a considerable amount of time behind bars on charges of fraud and robbery. Throughout Fernanda’s formative years, her mother insisted she was innocent and the target of a plot by various police departments to continually have her do time for crimes she did not commit. As a child, Fernanda believed her mother. As an adult, she saw what she could not as a child.
The memoir does not read like a book written by a woman who wants everyone to see and hear the ongoing traumatic experience she had growing up in order to gain people’s sympathy. This memoir reads like the story of an incredibly bright woman who has spent a lot of time making sense of the circumstances in which she grew up, and I get the feeling that writing all of this down was probably a big part of how she understood her childhood through the lens of adulthood. She isn’t asking anyone to feel sorry for her. She turned out just fine. But holy heck, what this lady went through growing up is going to stay with me for a long time.
September 17, 2026
The Framing is a thought provoking memoir of mothers and daughters, truth and lies and the perceptions of childhood versus our adult insights. It was a compelling read and one which kept me pondering well after I turned the final page.
Fernanda grew up with a mother who was in and out of jail for crimes she didn’t commit. Hounded by police in various states, Fernanda spent time in foster care as well as several stints on her own as a young child. Estranged from their family, Fernanda didn’t know who to trust and had to grow up quickly with no one to rely on except herself. As she grew into an adult and began work as a lawyer, she started to question everything her mother had told her.
At times heartbreaking, but also inspiring, Fernanda was an incredibly resilient and self-sufficient child, who was badly let down by the one person who should have been there for her. However this is not a story of loss and betrayal, but more a reflection on the gap between childhood beliefs and the truths uncovered as an adult. With themes of justice, identity, loyalty and trust, it was both moving and eye opening and I was throughly invested in following Fernanda’s memories of her childhood.
This is a book for lovers of honest and reflective memoirs about growing up and uncovering truths.
Fernanda grew up with a mother who was in and out of jail for crimes she didn’t commit. Hounded by police in various states, Fernanda spent time in foster care as well as several stints on her own as a young child. Estranged from their family, Fernanda didn’t know who to trust and had to grow up quickly with no one to rely on except herself. As she grew into an adult and began work as a lawyer, she started to question everything her mother had told her.
At times heartbreaking, but also inspiring, Fernanda was an incredibly resilient and self-sufficient child, who was badly let down by the one person who should have been there for her. However this is not a story of loss and betrayal, but more a reflection on the gap between childhood beliefs and the truths uncovered as an adult. With themes of justice, identity, loyalty and trust, it was both moving and eye opening and I was throughly invested in following Fernanda’s memories of her childhood.
This is a book for lovers of honest and reflective memoirs about growing up and uncovering truths.
August 27, 2026
Fernanda’s memoir reflects on her childhood in rural Victoria - an idyllic but unstable life until everything collapsed when her mother was sent to prison. As an adult she reconstructs her past and the lessons she learned about trust, truth, the justice system, and the ongoing process of reclaiming her own story.
As an Australian lawyer, Fernanda understands the criminal justice system. But when she was eight, her mother was imprisoned after claiming she had been framed, leaving Fernanda alone at home to fend for herself. She experienced isolation, instability, and long periods without adult care.
The memoir explores mother-daughter relationships alongside children’s independence and capabilities. It asks when a child is old enough to care for themselves, whether adults underestimate children, and how Fernanda found being left alone unexpectedly empowering.
Fernanda examines justice reinvestment, questioning the use of public funds to imprison people for minor offences, such as stealing two bottles of spirits. She also contrasts the liberationist model of children’s rights popular in the 1970’s with today’s dominant protectionist approach. This is something I’d like to learn more about.
Dahlstrom patiently unravels the myths she inherited, confronting betrayal without bitterness and exploring how identity is forged in the aftermath of injustice. Thank you @fernanda.dahlstrom for sending me a copy of your book to review.
5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As an Australian lawyer, Fernanda understands the criminal justice system. But when she was eight, her mother was imprisoned after claiming she had been framed, leaving Fernanda alone at home to fend for herself. She experienced isolation, instability, and long periods without adult care.
The memoir explores mother-daughter relationships alongside children’s independence and capabilities. It asks when a child is old enough to care for themselves, whether adults underestimate children, and how Fernanda found being left alone unexpectedly empowering.
Fernanda examines justice reinvestment, questioning the use of public funds to imprison people for minor offences, such as stealing two bottles of spirits. She also contrasts the liberationist model of children’s rights popular in the 1970’s with today’s dominant protectionist approach. This is something I’d like to learn more about.
Dahlstrom patiently unravels the myths she inherited, confronting betrayal without bitterness and exploring how identity is forged in the aftermath of injustice. Thank you @fernanda.dahlstrom for sending me a copy of your book to review.
5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Review of advance copy received from Author
One of the best memoirs I’ve read in years. Masterfully written, with clarity, precision, and penetrating insight. A uniquely fascinating reflection, The Framing keeps you stunned and engaged to the very last page. What is truth? How well can we know the people we love? A brilliant read. Fernanda Dahlstrom is a towering talent to watch.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews