Nicole Alexnder
Reviewed by Helen
This is a fascinating story heaped with facts from the past and a twist at the end that had me stunned, this is my first Nicole Alexander book but it won’t be my last, a compelling page turner getting to know the characters Brandon, Sean and Maggie from Ireland 1864 to Australia 1949 and getting to know Stella and Joe and the secrets that link these people.
It is 1949 and Stella O’Riain has spent seven years married to Joe and living on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert on Kirooma a sheep station, it is a desolate and very dry place a lot different from the city of Sydney where Stella grew up with her Italian parents, but she shows her strength and gets on with life but when she loses her baby and then her husband, she is left with no money and not a lot of choices. Her brother in law Harry offers her a place to live on their sugar cane farm in the Richmond Valley to help care for his wife, she takes this up hoping to learn more about the husband she did not know very well.
Harry is not too keen to discuss his younger brother and Stella is told not to visit the neighbour, who lives beyond the cedar tree, it is not long before Stella goes beyond the tree and meets Irish the old man who lives next door, now Stella learns a lot about Joe and the family who ran to Australia back in 1864 as criminals and she learns of the cedar cutters Brandon and Sean and what came between them and caused the rift that has lasted through two generations.
MS Alexander has painted a vivid description of life in the Richmond Valley for the cedar-cutters and the way they lived in the early days the conflict between two faiths and cousins who thought very differently and the problems this caused, and then 1942 how hard life was living on a dry and barren sheep station on the edge of a desert and the strength that one woman shows to do what she can to get her husband to open up. I did very much enjoy this book it shows what love, faith and betrayal can do to families, I do highly recommend this one.
4 stars
Published
March 3rd 2020
by Random House Australia
