The first book in The Matilda Saga.
Melbourne 1894.
Matilda O'Halloran is 12 years old and her mother is dying. Her father hasn't sent money home from his rural job in months and she works in a jam factory, sleeping on the doorstep to ensure she doesn't miss her shift. When her mother dies Matilda goes to find her father and finds that there is much her mother had not told her.
She chooses to settle on her father's homestead of Moura and the book follows her for the next twenty odd years of her life.
This book provides examples of:
- Outliving One's Offspring: Drinkwater outlives both his son who is killed in the Boer War and his Secret Other Family, Auntie Love's daughter and grandson - Matilda's father.
- Secret Other Family: Matilda's entire branch of the Drinkwater family, as it turns out.
- I Have No Son!: Drinkwater towards his half-caste daughter and the son she died birthing.
