Cirrus@Austlit

'Nell has a friend in need but will her kind heart wreck her chance for future happiness? A meddlesome prank and a stray kitten bring Helen and Gabriel together but will he be able to admit his feelings? When Lily goes missing will Archibald trust his wife or listen to the 'evidence' of family friends? Is Marie's runaway kookaburra the last straw or the answer to her problems? Will Teresa's faith in the Madonna bring her beloved Carlo home safely from the coral fishing?

'Catherine Martin's loyal, wilful and feisty heroines traverse the terrains of romance in Italy, Switzerland and Australia in these nineteenth-century tales of manners.

'Catherine Martin (1848?-1937) was the author of poems, essays, short stories and novels, including the popular An Australian Girl (1890). All the stories in this collection were published in the Australian press between 1881 and 1898. They have never been published in book form before.

'The book includes an introduction by Katherine Bode, an Associate Professor at the Australian National University working in digital humanities, literary studies and book history. Her Australian Research Council funded project, To Be Continued, has unearthed an astonishing bibliographic index and full-text archive of fiction in Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1955.' (Publication summary)

'First published in 1923, The Incredible Journey tells the story of Iliapa, an Aboriginal woman, who embarks on a long, arduous journey through the Australian outback in search of her son after he is abducted by a white man. Catherine Martin said that she wrote this novel 'in order to put on record, as faithfully as possible, the heroic love and devotion of a black woman when robbed of her child'.'

'The novel presents a vivid picture of the Aboriginal people (viewed through the eyes of a white novelist), their culture, their dispossession and, in particular, this abhorrent white practice of taking Aboriginal children away from their parents.' (Source: Goodreads website)