Paper Daisies

Book excerpt: At Christmas, 1900, university student Berylda Jones is heading home from Sydney to Bathurst, and with customary reluctance, for 'home' is where she and her sister Greta live in quiet terror, under the control of their sadistic Uncle Alec. Berylda has a plan this time, though, to free herself and Greta from Alec for good - if she can only find the courage to execute it. On New Year's Eve, that plan begins to take fire. Just as Alec tightens his grip on the sisters, a stranger arrives at their gate - Ben Wilberry, a botanist in search of a particular native wildflower, with his friend, the artist Cosmo Thompson. So begins a journey that will take them all deep into the rugged wilderness of the old gold rush country of Hill End in search of a means to cure an unspeakable evil. Set at the dawn of Federation and the coming of the Women's Vote, Paper Daisies is an Australian gothic tale of murder and misogyny. A story of one woman's determination to see justice done, and the man who clears her path along the way.