导语

  

    This is a work of fiction and should not be regarded as anything more, but I have done my best to stick to the historical facts concerning the discovery of Australia and its subsequent history. The fictional characters are witnesses to the painful birth of the Southern Colony,and they move alongside the true pioneers who made Australia what it is today. The Cadwallader and Collinson families are fictional, and any resemblance they may bear to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.
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内容提要

  

    Discovery    
    By the 1700s, the Aborigine has lived in harmony with the land in Australia for sixty thousand years. But now ghost-ships are arriving, and their very existence is threatened by a terrifying white invasion.
    Love
    When Jonathan Cadwallader leaves Cornwall to sail on the Endeavour, he is forced to abandon his sweetheart, Susan Penhalligan. But an act of brutality will reunite them in the raw and unforgiving pena] colony of New South Wales.
    Hardship
    Billy Penhalligan has survived transportation and clings to the promise of a new beginning. But there will be more suffering before he or his fellow convicts can regard Australia as home...
    A powerful, romantic epic weaving the lives of the Cadwalladers, the Penhalligans, the Aborigine and the convict settlers into the untamed tapestry of newly discovered Australia.