Wild Lands (42 page)

A fourth-generation grazier, Nicole Alexander returned to her family's property in the early 1990s. She is currently the business manager there. Nicole has a Master of Letters in creative writing and her novels, poetry, travel and genealogy articles have been published in Australia, Germany, America and Singapore.

She is the author of five previous novels:
The Bark Cutters
,
A Changing Land
,
Absolution Creek
,
Sunset Ridge
and
The Great Plains
.

Sarah Gordon knows what she wants: the family property, Wangallon. When it comes to working the land she's a natural but, as a woman, it's not her birthright. Even when her beloved older brother is killed in a tragic accident, nobody looks to Sarah to inherit.

Instead her grandfather passes management to Anthony Carrington, who was once Wangallon's jackeroo.
Feeling betrayed, Sarah escapes to Sydney to try to put Wangallon behind her. But her heart is pulled in two directions: Sydney with its cafes and social life, her blossoming career as a photographer, and her accountant boyfriend, Jeremy.
Or the property that has been in her family for over 120 years, with its floods, its droughts, the ghosts of generations past, and Anthony …

Past and present interweave in a story that traces the Gordon family from the arrival of Scottish immigrant Hamish Gordon in Australia in the 1850s to the life of his great-granddaughter, Sarah.

It's the early 1900s and Hamish Gordon has a massive rural holding, Wangallon, built on stock theft. Embarking on a ruthless plan to buy out his neighbours, Hamish's actions test the loyalties of his family and will have serious repercussions for generations to come.

In the late 1980s, Sarah Gordon now runs Wangallon with her fiancé, Anthony. Their relationship begins to deteriorate when a power struggle develops between them and escalates with the arrival of Sarah's Scottish half-brother, Jim Macken, who is intent on receiving his inheritance …

Unable to buy Jim out and with the possibility of losing part of Wangallon, Sarah finds herself fighting the law, her half-brother and Anthony.

Will she jeopardise her own happiness to keep the Gordon legacy alive?

In 1923 nineteen-year-old Jack Manning watches the construction of the mighty Harbour Bridge and dreams of being more than just a grocer's son. So when he's offered the chance to manage Absolution Creek, a sheep property 800 miles from Sydney, he seizes the opportunity.

But outback life is tough, particularly if you're young, inexperienced and have only a few textbooks to guide you. Then a thirteen-year-old girl, Squib Hamilton, quite literally washes up on his doorstep – setting in motion a devastating chain of events …

Forty years later and Cora Hamilton is waging a constant battle to keep Absolution Creek in business. She's ostracized by the local community and hindered by her inability to move on from the terrible events of her past, which haunt her both physically and emotionally.

Only one man knows what really happened in 1923. A dying man who is riding towards Absolution Creek, seeking his own salvation …

From the gleaming foreshores of Sydney Harbour to the vast Australian outback, this is a story of betrayal and redemption and of an enduring love which defies even death.

Although Madeleine has grown up in the shadow of her grandfather, the renowned artist David Harrow, she knows little about him. For David died long before she was born, and his paintings sold off to save the family property, Sunset Ridge.

Now, decades on, with the possibility of a retrospective of David's work, Madeleine races to unravel the remarkable life of her grandfather, a veteran of the Great War, unaware that his legacy extends far beyond the boundaries of the family property …

It's 1916, and as Europe descends further into bloodshed, three Queensland brothers – Thaddeus, Luther and David Harrow – choose freedom over their restricted lives at Sunset Ridge. A ‘freedom' that sees them bound for the hell of the trenches.

With the world on fire around them, the brothers bear witness to both remarkable courage and shocking carnage. But they also come to understand the healing power of love – love for their comrades, love for each other, and love for the young, highly spirited girl they left back home …

Sunset Ridge
is a story of bravery and misadventure, of intolerance and friendship, most of all it is the story of three young men who went to war and fought for love.

It is Dallas 1886, and the Wade Family is going from strength to strength: from a thriving newspaper and retail business in Texas to a sprawling sheep station half a world away in Queensland.

Yet money and power cannot compensate for the tragedy that struck twenty-three years ago, when Joseph Wade was slaughtered and his seven-year-old daughter Philomena abducted by Apache Indians.

Only her uncle, Aloysius, remains convinced that one day Philomena will return. So when news reaches him that the legendary Geronimo has been captured, and a beautiful white woman discovered with him, he believes his prayers have been answered.

Little does he know that the seeds of disaster have just been sown.

Over the coming years three generations of Wade men will succumb to an obsession with three generations of mixed-blood Wade women: the courageous Philomena, her hot-headed granddaughter Serena, and her gutsy great-granddaughter Abelena – a young woman destined for freedom in a distant red land. But at what price …?

A captivating journey from the American Wild West to the wilds of outback Queensland, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, in an epic novel tracing one powerful but divided family.