A Greater World

By Clare Flynn

When Elizabeth Morton hears her father wants her to travel to the other side of the world to marry a complete stranger, she decides he must be insane. This is 1920 and a woman has rights - she might still be too young to vote, but she's not going to be treated like a chattel. But she's reckoned without the brother-in-law she's always despised, who brutally shatters her comfortable world, leaving her no choice but to sail to Australia.

When Michael Winterbourne, a Cumbrian lead miner wakes up with a hangover after his engagement celebrations, he has no idea he is about to be the cause of a terrible tragedy that will change his life and destroy his family.

When Michael and Elizabeth meet on the SS Historic, bound for Sydney, they are reluctant emigrants from England. They may start to hope their troubles are over, but they'll find they're only just beginning.

A Greater World is set in the early 1920s, a period of transition between the old pre-World War One way of life and the post-War, with the coming economic Depression, major social change and the evolving role of women in society. The story moves from the dales of Cumberland and the docks of Liverpool to Sydney and the beautiful Blue Mountains.