By Colleen McCullough

No longer because the Thorn Birds has Colleen McCullough written a singular of such huge charm a few relatives and the Australian event because the contact. At its middle is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a tender guy in his local Scotland purely as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice and a godless insurgent. but if, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relations speedy become aware of that he has made a fortune within the gold fields and is now a guy to be reckoned with. Arriving in Sydney after a tough voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. provided no selection, she marries him and is whisked without delay throughout a wild, uninhabited nation-state to Alexander's personal city, named Kinross after himself. within the crags above it lies the world's richest gold mine. remoted in Alexander's nice residence, with out corporation retailer chinese language servants, Elizabeth unearths that the intimacies of marriage don't urged her husband to enlighten her approximately his earlier existence -- or perhaps his current one. She has no concept that he nonetheless has a mistress, the sensual, difficult, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander has demonstrated in his city, nor that he has additionally made Ruby a associate in his corporation, swiftly increasing its pursuits a long way past gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the top of the beleaguered chinese language group; the boy turns into expensive to Alexander, who fosters his schooling as a gentleman. Captured through the very diverse natures of Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have either one of them. Why may still he no longer? He has the fabled "Midas contact" -- a mix of interest, boldness and intelligence that he applies to each state of affairs, and which fails him in basic terms by way of those girls. even though Ruby loves Alexander desperately, Elizabeth doesn't. Elizabeth bears him daughters: the intense Nell, loads like her father; and the gorgeous, haunting Anna, who's to give her father with a torment out of which for as soon as he can't purchase his manner. Thwarted in his hope for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby's boy as a potential inheritor to his empire, unaware that by way of conserving Lee with him, he's relationship catastrophe. The tales of the lives of Alexander, Elizabeth and Ruby are intermingled with these of a wealthy solid of characters, and, after many twists and turns, come to a gorgeous and surprising climax. just like the Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough's new novel is without delay a love tale and a kinfolk saga, replete with tragedy, pathos, background and fervour. As few different novelists can, she conveys a feeling of position: the determined desire of her characters, women and men, rootless in an odd land, to create new beginnings.