Elianne

‘Elianne’ was built with the sweat and the blood of ‘kanakas’.

In 1881, ‘Big Jim’ Durham, an English soldier of fortune and profiteer, ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais, his young French wife, the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields, and names it in her honour.

The massive estate becomes a self-sufficient fortress, a cane-consuming monster and home to hundreds of workers, but ‘Elianne’ and its masters, the Durham Family, have dark and distant secrets; secrets that surface in the wildest and most inflammatory of times, the 1960s.

For Kate Durham and her brothers Neil and Alan, "freedom" is the catchword of the decade. Young Australians leap to the barricades of the social revolution. Rock ‘n’ roll, the Pill, the Vietnam War, the rise of Feminism, Asian immigration and the Freedom Ride join forces to rattle the chains of traditional values.

The workers leave the great sugar estates as mechanisation lessens the need for labour. And the Durham family, its secrets exposed, begins its fall from grace...

©2013 Copyright © Judy Nunn 2013. (P)2013 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

powerful storytelling

This is my first Judy Nunn book and I'm running out to find more. Absolutely loved the story and character development. Rode the emotional cane train through the years with the Durhams - cracking read!