And the Wild Birds Sing
Irish, Lola
Australia 1841. Sydney was a tough little harbor town; Melbourne, a scatter of huts. Adelaide was nothing but a camp where indolent upper-class scamps drank champagne while waiting for the promised lower classes to come and do the work.

The laws of Australia were, at that time, laws devised for governing jails and garrisons. They worked to the advantage of the British expatriates who ruled their vast estates like feudal lords. Yet, despite these conditions, thousands came, ready to carve out a new life in any way they could.

Desperate, poor people came, the overflow from the industrial sinks of England and Scotland, as well as starving Irish peasants who were refugees of the great famine. Upper-class black sheep, thieves, murderers, and whores -- all found their way to this hard land.

Raunie Lorne came, a proud and penniless gypsy, ready to use her beauty to claw her way up from the grimy hovels of Sydney's back streets to the raffish fringes of society. Brick O'Shea came, tough, handsome, and ruthless, determined to build an empire and cover the shame of his convict past. And there was lovely, aristocratic Barbara Merrill. Her liaison with Brick became the scandal of Sydney.
