The Touch

From the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds comes a multi-generational saga about the interlocked destinies of a Scots-Australian family and a Chinese family from the 1860s through the turn of the century. In his native Scotland, Alexander Kinross was once dismissed as a shiftless boilermaker’s apprentice and godless rebel. But when, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relatives quickly realize that he has made a fortune in the goldfields and is now a man to be reckoned with. Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. Offered no choice, she marries him and is whisked at once across a wild, uninhabited countryside to Alexander's own town, named Kinross after himself. In the crags above it lies the world’s richest gold mine. Isolated in Alexander’s grand home in the remote Australian wilderness, Elizabeth soon realizes how little she knows about her husband. She has no idea that Alexander is still deeply entangled with Ruby Costevan, his passionate, outspoken mistress and business partner whose son, Lee, becomes dear to Alexander. Although Ruby loves Alexander desperately, Elizabeth does not. Elizabeth bears him two daughters: the brilliant Nell, so much like her father; and the beautiful, haunting Anna, who presents her father with a torment out of which for once he cannot buy his way. Thwarted in his desire for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby’s son as a possible heir to his empire, unaware that by keeping Lee with him, he is courting disaster. Set against the rugged landscape of a rapidly changing Australia, The Touch is a sweeping family saga of passion, tragedy, history, and the desperate need to create new beginnings. Elizabeth bears him two daughters: the brilliant Nell, so much like her father; and the beautiful, haunting Anna, who is to present her father with a torment out of which for once he cannot buy his way. Thwarted in his desire for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby’s boy as a possible heir to his empire, unaware that by keeping Lee with him, he is courting disaster. The stories of the lives of Alexander, Elizabeth, and Ruby are intermingled with those of a rich cast of characters, and, after many twists and turns, come to a stunning and shocking climax. Like The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough’s new novel is at once a love story and a family saga, replete with tragedy, pathos, history, and passion. As few other novelists can, she conveys a sense of place: the desperate need of her characters, men and women, rootless in a strange land, to create new beginnings.