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Hobart Town 1878 – a vibrant town drawing people from every corner of the earth where, with confidence and a flair for storytelling, a person can be whoever he or she wants. Almost.
Ellen Thompson is young, vivacious and unmarried, with a six-month-old baby. Despite her fierce attachment to her family, boisterous and unashamed of their convict origins, Ellen dreams of marriage and disappearing into the ranks of the respectable. Then she meets Harry Woods.
Harry, newly arrived in Hobart Town from Western Australia, has come to help his aging father, ‘the Old Man of the Mountain’ who for more than twenty years has guided climbers on Mt Wellington. Harry sees in Ellen a chance to remake his life.
But, in Hobart Town, the past is never far away, never truly forgotten. When the past collides with Ellen’s dreams, she is forced to confront everything in life a woman fears most.
Based on a period in the lives of the author’s great-great-grandparents, Sarah Ellen Thompson and Henry Watkins Woods, Cold Blows the Wind is not a romance but it is a story of love – a mother’s love for her children, a woman’s love for her family and, those most troublesome loves of all, for the men in her life. It is a story of the enduring strength of the human spirit.
Intensely moving, based on a true story.
When we think of Australian history, we immediately think of convicts. But what happened to those who'd been transported after convictism ended? This is a remarkable story set on Tasmania and based loosely around the author's own ancestry. (Do read her Historical Note at the end of the book. It's absolutely fascinating.) Intensely moving, the book portrays beautifully the harsh, unforgiving lives of struggle and poverty they and their descendants were forced into. Rough and ready characters who nevertheless stick together through adversity. A real eye-opener and a must read for anyone interested in Australian history. - Amazon UK review.
The story begins in Hobart Town, Tasmania in 1878. Ellen Thompson is part of a scrappy working-class family who manage, most of the time, to keep one step ahead of the police. Her pregnancy and unwed status put a dent in her reputation but not her pride and determination to live a decent life. When her path crosses that of Harry Woods, a hardworking man who's returned to Hobart Town to care for his elderly father and step-mother, she thinks she's found her man. They begin a life together, and a family but Harry's past returns to haunt them. Ellen, despite the setback is determine to live life on her terms and do the best she can for her children.
Meyrick pieces together Ellen's rough and tumble life in brilliant fashion. Period details of 19th-century Hobart Town and Mount Wellington are fleshed out in great detail. You can feel Ellen's pain and sense her financial and emotional struggles to provide for her growing family. Ellen isn't perfect and her flaws are on display alongside her strength of character and commitment to her family. Her highs and lows are laid bare for us to see.
Beautifully written with an honest tenderness, the author draws you into her ancestor's lives, bringing their world with all its joy, pain, ugliness and love to life.
I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction, women's fiction and those that just love a great story. — Jean M Roberts @ The Book Delight
England 1586
Alyce Bradley has few choices when her father decides it is time she marry as many refuse to see her as other than the girl she once was—unruly, outspoken and close to her grandmother, a woman suspected of witchcraft.
Thomas Granville, an ambitious privateer, inspires fierce loyalty in those close to him and hatred in those he has crossed. Beyond a large dowry, he is seeking a virtuous and dutiful wife. Neither he nor Alyce expect more from marriage than mutual courtesy and respect.
As the King of Spain launches his great armada and England braces for invasion, Alyce must confront closer dangers from both her own and Thomas’s past, threats that could not only destroy her hopes of love and happiness but her life. And Thomas is powerless to help.
In England in 1586, 28-year-old Alyce Bradley has learned to be “silent and obedient and not draw attention.” Twelve years ago, her outspoken ways and interest in healing and the physic, as with her grandmother, could make her the target of witchcraft accusations festering in the town, so the family sent her away to work for Lady Faulconer. She became a serving maid, and her life in exile was harsh. This taught her to curb her sharp tongue and unseemly behavior.
She has now returned home, and her father insists she marry. He will provide a sizable dowry to compensate for her lack of beauty, but she has no desire to marry. She agrees only if she is allowed her choice of suitors, but her choices are limited. First is Robert Chapman, an overbearing and opportunistic apprentice in her father’s shop. He has expected for years to marry Alyce and inherit her father’s shop, but Alyce refuses because of his aggressions toward her. Second is Thomas Granville, a privateer under a cloud of villagers’ gossip. He needs Alyce’s dowry to fund his newest expedition. After meeting Thomas, she decides that they can make a life together based on courtesy and respect. Thomas seems unaffected by the town’s gossip swirling around him, living his life as he chooses. Neither does Alyce allow gossip to determine her choice of a husband.
You could not find a better character than Alyce. She is a plain-looking woman of strength and profundity that diminishes the typical beautiful heroine. She settles into her new married life with contentment and hope for her future. What takes place throughout the rest of the book is not to be missed. The engaging plot, authentic dialogue, and narrative woven with rich descriptions will wrap the reader in the world of Tudor England. — Historical Novels Review Issue 95 (February 2021)
England 1585.
When Bess Stoughton, conventional and usually obedient, discovers that her father is arranging for her to marry an elderly neighbour, she rebels and wrests from her father a year’s grace to find a husband more to her liking.
Edmund Wyard, a taciturn and scarred veteran of England’s campaign in Ireland, is ignoring the pressure from his family to find a suitable wife as he prepares to join the Earl of Leicester’s army in the Netherlands.
Although Bess and Edmund are drawn to each other, they are aware that they can have nothing more than friendship. Bess knows that Edmund’s wealth and family connections place him beyond her reach. And Edmund, with his well-honed sense of duty, has never considered that he could follow his own wishes.
With England on the brink of war and convulsed with fear of Catholic plots, time is running out for them both.
In 1585, Bess Stoughton, a young widow and well-loved waiting-woman to Lady Allingbourne, asks her father not to make her marry an old man she dislikes intensely, merely to cement a land-deal. In return she promises to secure a more suitable husband within a year. It is not easy for her as she is no longer young or rich enough. That is until she meets Edmund Wyard, but because he is a dour soldier with lands in Ireland to which he is anxious to return and fight, her friends discourage her. Not only that, but his domineering mother has reasons to dislike Bess intensely. Yet despite all this, they can’t take their eyes off each other.
Forsaking All Other is a classy historical romance in which the Elizabethan period is well-depicted. Although the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism does play its part in the plot, the fact the characters live far from the royal court with its well-known characters plotting and vying with each other, is refreshing. — Historical Novels Review Issue 88 (May 2019)
November 1914
Australia has been at war for three months. Kate Burke has come down from the country to Coburg, a semi-rural town on the northern edge of Melbourne, to stay with her aunt whose two sons have already left with the First Australian Imperial Force.
Her sweetheart, Jack Sheehan, is four miles away at the Broadmeadows Camp, one of the many who rushed to enlist, fearful that this great adventure would be over before he could play his part.
By the year’s end, Jack is on a troopship sailing towards Egypt. He has promised Kate that the first thing he will do when he returns is marry her. Like all those who cheered their men on their way, Kate waits in hope and fear, holding Jack’s promise close.
As April 1915 turns to May, Australia’s baptism of blood on the beaches of the Dardanelles is gloried in. But in the months and the years that follow, the cost of war is relentlessly counted, not only on the battlefield but in the streets the men have left behind, and in the hearts of those who watch and wait and pray.
No one will remain untouched.
Nothing will remain the same.
A heart-rending story of love, loss and endurance during the Great War in Australia.
Another wonderful historical novel telling the story of the Great War from the perspective of the women on the homefront. It really captures the emotions and tensions of the period.
I am familiar with the area where the book is set and she has captured it perfectly and with historical accuracy. - Goodreads review