1851 Ireland.After enduring years of a devastating potato famine, Ellen Kittrick is a survivor. Crop failures and a descent into poverty changes her from a happy wife and mother to a woman struggling to keep her children alive.To put food on the table and to stop the landowner's agent from tearing down their cottage due to unpaid rent, Ellen defies her family and works at an Englishman's manor, but with her husband out of work, and a secretive brother-in-law wanting her for his own, Ellen must face every challenge with new strength.When several shocking events occur, it forces her to make an enormous decision.With aid coming from an unlikely source, namely Englishman Rafe Hamilton, Ellen leaves Ireland with what is left of her family to start again in a new country.But will the colony give her the security and happiness she longs for, especially when she has left her heart behind?Can Ellen thrive in a strange land?Or has she made the greatest mistake of her life? Author of over forty novels, AnneMarie Brear has crafted sweeping historical fiction with atmosphere, emotion, and drama aplenty that will surely satisfy any fan of the genre. AnneMarie was born in a small town in N.S.W. Australia, to English parents from Yorkshire, and is the youngest of five children. From an early age she loved reading, working her way through the Enid Blyton stories, before moving onto Catherine Cookson's novels as a teenager.Living in England during the 1980s and more recently, AnneMarie developed a love of history from visiting grand old English houses and this grew into a fascination with what may have happened behind their walls over their long existence. Her enjoyment of visiting old country estates and castles when travelling and, her interest in genealogy and researching her family tree, has been put to good use, providing backgrounds and names for her historical novels which are mainly set in Yorkshire or Australia between Victorian times and WWII.A long and winding road to publication led to her first novel being published in 2006.She has now published over thirty-five historical family saga novels, becoming an Amazon UK best seller and with her novel, The Slum Angel, winning a gold medal at the USA Reader's Favourite International Awards. Two of her books have been nominated for the Romance Writer's Australia Ruby Award and the USA In'dtale Magazine Rone award and recently she has been nominated twice as a finalist for the UK RNA RONA Awards.AnneMarie lives in the Southern Highlands of N.S.W. Australia.Please visit her website to learn more about AnneMarie, her books and to subscribe to her quarterly newsletter.
