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In the mid-19th-century Australia was the New Frontier. People were leaving England in droves in search of adventure: younger sons who had disgraced themselves, the very poor seeking a new life, those running away from personal problems - criminals. Liza Docherty is escaping an enforced marriage to a brute, and a sadistic father. At 18, she's full of optimism even though she's carrying a child - the result of a vicious rape. This is her story, and that of a small group of hopefuls from small-town Lancashire; a rags-to-riches story built on courage, cunning, determination and despair, set in Australia's infertile West. Despite the infertility their new country has much to offer anyone prepared to work hard; though it's far from plain-sailing. Life is precarious, death often comes early, and the new settlers must protect themselves and their property against incursion, as well as natural enemies. Liza finds happiness there for a time - but even Australia is not big enough to hide forever - or to keep memories at bay and, given an unexpected opportunity she returns to England, to discover that there are different kinds of cruelty, that helplessness and hard-living are not always the result of poverty and barbarous ignorance, that sophisticated manipulation. Unhappiness can lurk under fine clothes and inside big houses, and soon she must fight the biggest battle of her life.Drama escalates into melodrama in the last few pages of this novel, as Liza makes her final bid for freedom, peace and happiness. A big, robust novel of wide-open spaces, narrow minds, hard physical toil and the suppression of women by loutish men. (Kirkus UK)

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