Book description
After the unusual death of their papa, Adele Overend and her younger
brother Godwin are dispatched from comfortable Autumn Hall in Yorkshire
to the uttermost ends of the earth - gold rush Dunedin in 1864. Even
worse for the grieving pair, they must travel on separate vessels.
Self-possessed and practical Adele discovers herself cast up on an
inhospitable island occupied by a misfit band of sealers. Godwin arrives
on the rim of civilisation to find his sister vanished and nobody
willing to employ an unusually pretty boy. Their adventures lead them
into a series of mishaps and self-reinventions. Oh, what a catalogue:
shipwreck, murder, renegade scientists, nasty doctors, a brothel, an
asylum, urchins, a remarkable baby, lost relations, cross-dressing,
dwarf wrestling, pyrotechnics, concealed identities, quackery, highway
robbery, strange religious cults, bridled passions heaving under the
stays. Barbara Else's new novel is an alluring fusion of history, comedy
and parody. It is Shakespearean and yet Victorian, gothic and
melodramatic, wise, high spirited, and tender. Barbara Else is the
author of five previous best-selling novels and two books for children,
and edited six collections of stories for children and GRAND STANDS, in
which top New Zealand writers talk about grandparenthood. Her first
novel, THE WARRIOR QUEEN, was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand
Book Awards. She was the Victoria University of Wellington Writer in
Residence for 1999. With her husband, writer Chris Else, Barbara runs
TFS, a Wellington-based literary agency and assessment service.
