ISBN 978-1-923214-64-4
PAPERBACK
The Foundling
With Fortune’s Fool: The road beyond Eureka
Re-published as a single volume, The Foundling and Fortune’s Fool paint an authentic picture of South Australia and Victoria in the formative years of European settlement, and describe a young woman’s compelling journey of self-discovery from the social injustices of the Burra Burra to the challenges of Ballaarat and beyond.
THE FOUNDLING. Abandoned as a baby, taunted as a child, Julia Stephen – the Foundling of the title – learns to survive in the West Country of England until her adoptive Methodist family sets sail for South Australia in the earliest years of European settlement, in search of a better life.
Necessity takes them north, to work for the South Australian Mining Association of the Burra Burra, whose regime rates the workforce far below the appeal of profi ts. When Julia settles in the Company township called Kooringa, her past returns to haunt her.
Who is the mysterious packman from Julia’s Devon childhood who follows her through the streets of Kooringa township? What is the grim secret she uncovers in the dank squalor of a dugout in the Burra Burra Creek?
FORTUNE’S FOOL. Ballaarat in the goldrush of the early 1850s. A place of glittering promise and deep despair; where hidden resentments will swell into open rebellion against the colonial government in December 1854.
Into this male-dominated sex-starved shantytown comes Miss Julia Stephen, seeking her Cornish lover. Quick-witted, resourceful – and unscrupulous – she becomes one of the most successful women on the Victorian diggings. When tensions erupt into bloody rebellion at Eureka, Julia Stephen’s life is transformed beyond her wildest dreams.
About the Author
Mary Talbot Cross was born in Devon, England, and is a graduate of Scotland’s Aberdeen University. She has written four novels set in historical times; in addition to The Foundling and Fortune’s Fool, Fate Knows No Tears tells the story of the Edwardian poet ‘Laurence Hope,’ while Resurgence is the author’s tribute to South-west France. Mary Talbot Cross is the pseudonym of the historian Jennifer M.T. Carter. She lives in Burra.