Victoria Purman Livres

A moving story of love, loss and survival against the odds by bestselling author Victoria Purman. It was never just a man's war... Melbourne, 1942 War has engulfed Europe and now the Pacific, and Australia is fighting for its future. For spinster Flora Thomas, however, nothing much has changed. Tending to her dull office job, and beloved brother and father as well as knitting socks for the troops leaves her relatively content. Then one day a stranger gives her brother a white feather and Flora's anger propels her out of her safe life and into the vineyards of the idyllic Mildura countryside, a member of the Australian Women's Land Army. There she meets Betty, a 17-year-old former shop girl keen to do her bit for the war effort and support her beloved, and the unlikely Lilian, a well-to-do Adelaide girl, fleeing her overbearing family and the world's expectations for her. As the Land Girls are dropped into a new world of close-knit community and backbreaking work, the trio start to find pride in their role. More than that, they find a kind of liberation. But as the clouds of war darken the horizon, and their fears for loved ones - brothers, husbands, lovers - fighting at the front grow, the Land Girls' hold on their world and their new-found freedoms is fragile.Even if they make it through unscathed, they will not come through unchanged ...

A Women's Fiction dual narrative that is set in the same beautiful mansion in both contemporary South Australia and in the 1930s.How much of who we are is destiny and how much is chance? In 1934, the three Miss Allens - Ruby, Adeline and Clara - arrive in the seaside town of Remarkable Bay for their annual summer holiday. It's the last time they'll spend summer as a family. Adeline is engaged, Ruby is weighing up an offer, and Clara is just eighteen and about to start her life. But by summer's end, the lives they have known will change irrevocably and a mysterious secret will tear the family apart. Eighty-two years later, Ruby's great-granddaughter Roma Harris moves to the now sleepy Remarkable Bay, retreating from tragedy. Roma's distant cousin Addy arrives too, fleeing a life with too much drama. It's only when the women discover an old guest book that they start asking questions about the mysterious third Miss Allen. Who was she? Why has she disappeared from the family's history? If they solve this mystery from their past, could it change their futures?