Author Description

Charlotte Hatfield, barely eighteen, is sent away from her English family estate to marry an army officer stationed in Australia and return to her titled family a respectable married woman - instead of the unwed mother of her true love's child. Together with a midwife-companion, employed by her father to see her safely delivered and suitably wed, Charlotte finds the officer she marries no gentlemen. Alone and divested of the dowry paid to her new husband, she joins the hordes heading for Victoria's goldfields to support her new family in any way she can. A French banker, a Chinese digger and an American stagecoach driver play their parts in Charlotte's transformation from sheltered society darling to frontier woman of substance, moulded by the challenges and achievements on which she thrives.