Book description
A new novel from the author of the best-selling The Denniston Rose. The
little French girl, Lily Alouette, was singing and dancing almost as
soon as she could walk, and performing became as much a part of her as
breathing. When she is left an orphan in an unfamiliar country after her
parents have emigrated to the goldfields, it is performing in a circus
that offers survival. Later she takes to the stage in both Australia and
New Zealand, which is where she attracts the attention of two men. One
is the faithful Jack Lacey; the other is the renowned pirate Bully
Hayes. While Jack has to compete with both Bully and the theatre to win
Lily's attention, Lily finds she must share Jack, too. This lively,
unconventional love story is set amid real figures from
nineteenth-century theatre, giving a vivid and entertaining picture of
the life of actors and circus performers, of gold miners, of horse
breeders, of colonial settlers. Filtered through a unique and intriguing
narrative, it is page-turning, heart-warming and full of surprises.
Jenny Pattrick is a writer and former jeweller whose six published
novels, including The Denniston Rose, its sequel Heart of Coal, the
Whanganui novel Landings, and Inheritance, set in Samoa, have all been
number one bestsellers in New Zealand. In 2009 she received the New
Zealnd Post Mansfield Fellowship. In 2011 she and husband, musician
Laughton Pattrick, published the children s book and CD of songs, The
Very Important Godwit.
