'Summer at Mount Hope is Pride and Prejudice in the Victorian wheat belt of the 1890s. A black comedy about a young woman’s attempt to resist the worlds of men and money, Phoeba Crupp is a young woman who lives with her parents and sister on a small farm near Geelong. Her father is an eccentric ex-accountant who moved his family from the city in order to establish a vineyard, a decision her mother bitterly — and frequently — resents. While her sister makes a play for the local squatter’s son, Phoeba is content with the companionship of her best friend Henrietta, until circumstances push her towards the world of men and money. Summer at Mount Hope has a lot of the black comedy of Ham’s first novel, The Dressmaker, but also contains a more serious strand about the efforts of a spirited woman striving to be free, in a society where this was almost impossible.' (Publication summary)
