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142 pages

English

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A tale of two very different sisters whose 1890s voyage from London into remote outback Australia becomes a journey of self-discovery, set against a landscape of wild beauty and savage dispossession.London in 1891: Harriet Cameron is a talented young artist whose mother died when she was barely five. She and her beloved sister Sarah were brought up by their father, radical thinker James Cameron. After adventurer Henry Vincent arrives on the scene, the sisters' lives are changed forever. Sarah, the beauty of the family, marries Henry and embarks on a voyage to Australia. Harriet, intensely missing Sarah, must decide whether to help her father with his life's work or to devote herself to painting. When James Cameron dies unexpectedly, Harriet is overwhelmed by grief. Seeking distraction, she follows Sarah to Australia, and afterwards into the outback, where she is alienated by the casual violence and great injustices of outback life. Her rejuvenation begins with her friendship with an Aboriginal stockman and her growing love for the landscape. But this fragile happiness is soon threatened by murders at a nearby cattle station and by a menacing station hand who is seeking revenge.

Sujets

Historical romance

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Publié par	RedDoor Publishing
Date de parution	02 juillet 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913062408
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0180€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Praise for Alison Booth’s novels
THE PHILOSOPHER’S DAUGHTERS
‘A lyrical tale of wild frontier Australia. Evocative, insightful, thought-provoking’
Karen Viggers, best-selling author
‘Two young women in outback Australia in the 1890s, where the brilliant sunlight may illuminate more than the landscape. Booth is superb at the small detail that creates a life, and the large one that gives it meaning’
Marion Halligan, prize-winning novelist
‘A delicately handled historical drama with a theme of finding self, both in relationships and art’
Tom Flood, prize-winning novelist
A PERFECT MARRIAGE
‘With an intricate plaiting of past and present that both tantalises and beguiles, this novel is a poignant account of a marriage that is not what its title suggests’
Marion Halligan, prize-winning novelist

‘Alison Booth captures the magnificence of female friendships and the tragedy of a disastrous marriage in a narrative that has the most satisfying of conclusions, hope’
Nicole Alexander, best-selling author
‘With crystal-clear prose and an artful warmth, Alison Booth leads us into the heart of contemporary human relationships, exposing tough – and necessary – truths. Very moving’
Nigel Featherstone, author of Bodies of Men

‘… cleverly structured…’
S ydney Morning Herald
STILLWATER CREEK
A mythical town and its people are brought beautifully to life… a really lovely book’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A finely observed historical drama… evocative and eminently readable’
The Age
‘A story that lingers long in the imagination’
Debra Adelaide,
author of The Household Guide to Dying
‘Who could not be charmed by Stillwater Creek ? I loved the characters, the scenery, the dramas, the gentle humour and the sense of Australia as it once was’
Good Reading
THE INDIGO SKY
‘A charming, big-hearted tale, told with skill and grace’
Madison

‘This charming follow-up… captures the heart and soul of a time… you can practically smell the eucalyptus, and picture that titular indigo sky’
Books + Publishing magazine

‘Alison Booth ’ s distinctive characters live in Jingera, a small fictional town on the coast of NSW… Booth puts steel into the charm by addressing the harsher realities of the times’
The Age
A DISTANT LAND
‘ A Distant Land is part-thriller, part-romance, and… I found myself engrossed in the drama of Zidra’s investigation into corruption in internal security and of the aftermath of Jim’s South-East Asian ordeal, all the way to the final page’
T he Canberra Times
‘ A Distant Land is a moving story of love set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War’
Aussie Reviews

Other fiction titles by Alison Booth:
Stillwater Creek
The Indigo Sky
A Distant Land
A Perfect Marriage
The Philosopher’s Daughters
Alison Booth

Published by RedDoor
www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2020 Alison Booth
The right of Alison Booth to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Emily Caudelle
Typesetting: Fuzzy Flamingo
www.fuzzyflamingo.co.uk
For my family

On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d’abord et longtemps, tout rivage.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
André Gide (1925)
The Counterfeiters (Les faux-monnayeurs)
Contents
Praise for Alison Booth’s novels 3
Contents 13
Chapter 1 16
Chapter 2 24
Chapter 3 29
Chapter 4 33
Chapter 5 39
Chapter 6 42
Chapter 7 48
Chapter 8 54
Chapter 9 65
Chapter 10 74
Chapter 11 80
Chapter 12 85
Chapter 13 90
Chapter 14 95
Chapter 15 101
Chapter 16 108
Chapter 17 119
Chapter 18 138
Chapter 19 146
Chapter 20 156
Chapter 21 164
Chapter 22 169
Chapter 23 183
Chapter 24 191
Chapter 25 198
Chapter 26 202
Chapter 27 212
Chapter 28 222
Chapter 29 233
Chapter 30 242
Chapter 31 253
Chapter 32 261
Chapter 33 265
Chapter 34 272
Chapter 35 286
Chapter 36 294
Chapter 37 298
Chapter 38 306
Chapter 39 310
EPILOGUE 316
Acknowledgements 320
Also by Alison Booth 323
Chapter 1 324
PART I

London, 1890

Chapter 1
His Hands Could Span an Octave Easily
‘That brings me to my penultimate point.’ Dr Bagnall looked up from his lecture notes and peered at Aunt Charlotte, who was sitting next to Sarah in the front row of the packed hall.
At last, Sarah thought. He’d been droning on for a good fifteen minutes and nothing that he’d said was new. Everyone who attended meetings of the Women’s Franchise League knew all about the history of the women’s suffrage movement. She glanced at her father and Mrs Lydia Buxton. Slumped in their chairs at the back of the platform, waiting their turn at the lectern, their posture could surely not meet with the approval of Aunt Charlotte, who’d nudged Sarah awake only minutes before.
‘Get on with it, why don’t yer?’ shouted a female voice. ‘It’s about bloody time we ’eard yer last point!’
Sarah felt a thrill of excitement. But alas, Dr Bagnall took no notice of the interruption and continued to develop his second-last point, which seemed indistinguishable from his previous one. Or perhaps it’s all too subtle for me, Sarah thought, losing the thread of Dr Bagnall’s argument as she vanished into the world of her imagination, a landscape whose features were defined by sound. In her mind she was running through the piano suite she’d been practising that afternoon. She was passing through its valleys and was now uplifted on to a plateau; she was being carried forward towards the peak that was just a few bars ahead when her progress was halted by a harsh sound.
‘Give the women a go, why don’t yer!’ It was the same voice as before. ‘We want to ’ear wot Mrs Buxton ’as to say. Get off the stage, yer long-winded burbler!’
Swivelling around, Sarah narrowly avoided bumping hats with Aunt Charlotte. She stood up to see better and – in the instant before the rest of the audience did likewise – saw a tall middle-aged woman in a clinch with two slightly shorter policemen. The woman was still shouting although her words had become muffled, in part by the constabulary embrace, but also by the uproar as fifty or so voices began to talk.
Although Sarah could hear Dr Bagnall continuing with what must now be his last point, no one was listening. All heads were craning towards the performance at the rear of the hall. Surely Dr Bagnall couldn’t have failed to notice what was happening to his audience. She turned at the moment a tomato flew towards him. He ducked and it landed on his papers; his shout and the exploding tomato were like a firework on Guy Fawkes Night. Poor Dr Bagnall, how humiliated he must feel. Sarah found a handkerchief and ran up the steps to the platform. While Dr Bagnall wrung his hands, she knelt on the floor and gathered up his notes. She wiped off the tomato pulp as if she were cleaning blood from a wound; her expiation for being pleased, for just an instant, by an act of aggression.
The racket at the back of the hall was becoming louder. People were shouting. Many high shrill voices, mingled with fewer deep male voices, moving towards a resolution of the crisis, as in the final movement of a concerto. Dr Bagnall seemed to have lost all interest in his lecture notes. He leapt down, almost athletically, from the stage and joined Sarah’s father and aunt in the side aisle. Sarah absorbed herself in methodically cleaning the pages of the lecture notes. Some of the writing had been washed off with the liquid of the tomato, and her handkerchief was stained with red juice and blue ink.
‘That’s just not big enough for the job,’ said a voice that reverberated like a double bass. Sarah saw a large white handkerchief first, and behind that, a tall figure silhouetted against the harsh lighting. When he squatted next to her, she saw that he had curly blonde hair and a broad, lightly tanned face. ‘Such a shame about your handkerchief,’ he said.
‘Such a shame about the lecture notes. We’ll never know Dr Bagnall’s last point now,’ said Sarah.
‘I think we can predict it, don’t you?’ the man said. ‘You have some tomato on your sleeve. Use my handkerchief.’
His hand holding out the handkerchief was large, with long fingers. They could span an octave easily. As she took his offering, her fingers accidentally touched his. She felt a shock as if she had felt something very hot and withdrew her hand so quickly that his handkerchief fell on to the floor. Each of them went to pick it up simultaneously and again she felt that electric touch. She was blushing now and didn’t want to look up. As she wiped up the few tomato seeds clinging to the sleeve of her pale-grey jacket, she noticed the monogrammed initials HV on a corner of the handkerchief.
‘I’m Henry Vincent,’ the double bass man said. ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Sarah Cameron. Charles Barclay told me who you are.’
She wound the handkerchief around her fingers. Sarah, the eighteen-year-old younger daughter of widower James Cameron, that was how Charles m