Strands of Gold

Set against a backcloth which ranges from the stifling conformity of colonial Singapore to the blistering heat of the Australian outback, Strands of Gold charts the struggle of Lucy Rowlands to escape from the brutality of a loveless marriage and create a new life. In the sailing ketch Selangor Lady, she and her companions begin their perilous journey to Australia, and new identities. Then comes discovery, and Lucy's escape with the enigmatic Greg Lamont involves solving the clue to a gold strike made twenty five years before, somewhere in the barren wastes north of Kalgoorlie. Strands of Gold is what used to be called 'a rattling good yarn', and holds the reader spellbound; but it is the characters, Matthew and Jarvis, Greg, and Lucy herself, who draw the reader into their absorbing world, to linger in the mind long after the story is told.