When Miriam Oliver arrives at the Teesdale homestead with her bold personality and unmistakable red hair, she isn't exactly invited she's simply arrived, an unbidden guest who will upend every comfortable assumption this Australian family holds about English ladies and their place in the world. Mr. Teesdale has returned from Melbourne, bringing with him the promise of old family friends from England, but his children John William and Arabella greet the news with wildly different reactions: he with skeptical resistance, she with naive excitement. Hornung, better known for his Raffles tales of the criminal class, turns his sharp eye to a different kind of transgression the social comedy of class collision, the comedy of manners that erupts when Empire meets frontier, when English propriety meets colonial directness. Miriam isn't a typical Victorian heroine waiting to be married off; she's force, she's disruption, she's the question mark hanging over everything polite. The novel fizzes with energy in its opening pages, building toward her entrance like a powder train. For readers who enjoy the social satires of Henry James or the colonial comedies of H.G. Wells, this is a lesser-known gem that deserves resurrection.
