Nathan Hobby's The Red Witch is an absorbing tribute to literary giant Katharine Susannah Prichard

Her conversion to communism wasn't a road-to-Damascus revelation; it evolved with careful and critical consideration, as her lively intelligence and fiercely independent spirit became increasingly aware of late 19th and early 20th century social injustice. And in case you are wondering, the less than flattering appellation, Red Witch, resulted from friendly fire, rather than any opposing slur, although national security paranoia in the Soviet sensitive years prior to her death probably gave ASIO the chance to brand her bulky file with the tag.

This is a handsomely produced book, meticulously indexed and footnoted, with an exhaustive bibliography and beautifully clear-sighted print. Hobby is a Perth-based author and academic, with access to multiple aspects of KSP's politically tangled literary life, including her own version, Child of the Hurricane (1963) and her son, Ric Throssell's, fondly defensive memories, Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard (1975) along with many other sources, personal, political, and academic. In his preface, Hobby says his "is not a cultural history or a work of literary criticism but the story of one remarkable life". Indeed. And pleasingly, his fluently accessible narrative weaves anecdotes and contemporary observations to cleverly reveal KSP's passionately bittersweet journey, like brush strokes on a studio portrait.

KSP was born in Fiji in 1882 of Australian parents, her father "a driven, sensitive man" and depression-prone conservative newspaper editor, and her mother "a gentle, conventional women who left few historical traces". KSP's family soon returned to Melbourne, with interludes in Tasmania as her father's fluctuating journalistic career and moody darkness became increasingly precarious. When he took his own life in 1907, his daughter was a young woman already set on journalism as means to reach the greater end of literature, and grief may have focused that vision.

KSP was drawn to ideas and the world, and London, in the years before the Great War, sharpened her early feminist socialism. Which the Russian Revolution, a few years later, seemed to validate. But she wasn't living the life of a sheltered (or celibate) visionary and hadn't forgotten her literary career. Her first novel, The Pioneers (1915), about settlers struggling to establish a farm in South Gippsland in the 1840s, was inspired by Frederick McCubbin's well-known triptych painting of the same name and seen as "a fine debut for a potentially significant writer".

In 1915, she met Lieutenant Hugo Throssell, a wounded VC war hero, and the attraction - emotionally and intellectually - was mutual. Although Throssell's diary entry for the day merely said: "Met Miss KSP". He was a West Australian, and following their marriage they settled in Greenmount, on the Darling Range escarpment near Perth. Throssell supported KSP's communist stance, causing disquiet among people who found this inappropriate for an Australian war hero. This flags a fascinating aspect of this story: the way KSP was moved to write so many culturally successfully works, including novels, such as Black Opal (1921), Working Bullocks (1926) and Coonardoo (1929) that vividly convey her knowledge and love of Australia, while actively supporting a belief in the progress of international communism.

Many writers and intellectuals from around the world were keen to see what was happening in Russia, and in 1933, KSP also made the journey. This was before the true extent of Stalin's ruthless purges were known, but there was already evidence to suggest the idealism was tarnished. However, if KSP had misgivings, she suppressed them. Tragically, as she was about to return home, she received news that her husband, having never fully recovered from war trauma, had killed himself by gunshot, presumably with his Army service revolver.

In the 1950s, their much-loved son, Ric, who was then an Australian diplomat, was mentioned in connection with the Petrov Affair. He was cleared, but ongoing security concerns as KSP's son damaged his career. Despite precarious health, KSP's twin passions for Australia and world peace through communism remained firm until she died in 1969 at her Greenmount home, which is now the KSP Writers' Centre. This beautifully crafted biography is a fitting tribute to her memory.