The Forthright Woman

Widow Marcella Ross won't let anything - or anyone - stop her from discovering the truth behind a deadly family mystery ... Mystery and romance collide in this compulsive historical adventure from a bestselling Australian author.

1898, South Australia

At the gateway to the Flinders Ranges lies Kanyaka Station, once a thriving sheep and cattle property, now abandoned and in ruins. But a discovery in her late mother's papers draws recently widowed Marcella Ross out to its remote landscape in search of clues to the disappearance of her Uncle Luca, an Italian immigrant whose fate seems to have been bound up in that of his mysterious partner - also long-since vanished. When Marcella is accosted by a daunting stranger, she discovers he too is entangled in the secrets of the past. Tragedy and obsession threaten Marcella's fragile independence, so how far will she have to go to unlock the secrets of Kanyaka - or solve the puzzle of her own future?

1955

After learning that they are unlikely to have children, Frances and Joe MacDonald have taken the unusual step of buying a caravan and travelling together through the outback. They stop at Kanyaka Station, where Fran becomes mesmerised by the past. Family lore holds that an ancestor met an untimely end amid the desolate ruins. But what truly happened, and to whom, at the isolated station? As fate alters the course of her life, Fran's footsteps echo another woman's from so long ago ...

As the mystery unravels, will these two women have the chance to take control of their own destinies?

PRAISE:

'Fraser's excellent research makes the reader feel like they are actually back in 1898 with her richly detailed settings: bustling train stations and port docks, flies and dust...' - GLAM Adelaide