The Touch

Spanning nearly fifty years, from the 1860s through to the turn of the century, THE TOUCH tells the story of Alexander Kinross, who flees from a childhood of poverty in Scotland to make his fortune in the Australian and American goldfields.

In the process he meets the women he loves but can never marry - and marries a woman who can never love him. When Alexander Kinross writes home to Scotland for a bride, he is remembered only as a shiftless young boilermaker's apprentice.

Since he encloses a draft for one thousand pounds, however, arrangements are swiftly made to send him his young cousin Elizabeth, although it is her sister Jean he had wanted.

So Elizabeth makes her way across the Atlantic towards a land she knows nothing about, and a husband about whom she knows still less.

Arriving in Sydney, she meets Alexander - handsome, devilish in appearance and manner, and obviously rich, and determined to get richer.

He marries her and takes her home across the wild and barren countryside to his great house.

What he does not tell her is that he first made his fortune in the Californian gold rush - where he also fell in love with the only woman he will ever truly love. Intermingling the stories of a rich cast of characters, and bringing the novel to a stunning climax as Alexander Kinross sacrifices himself for his wife's happiness, this latest novel is a stunning story of love and passion set against the harsh and brutal world of emerging modern Australia