by Thomas Keneally

In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child, sixteen-year-old Edward, to Australia.  Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that his father’s fame has reached even there,  as has the gossip about his father’s scandalous liason with an actress.  Amid colonists, ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young women, Edward strives to be his own man–and keep secret the fact that he’s read none of his father’s novels.