Henry Carter Hull

Emma Blaxland-Hunter, a prima ballerina from London, must re-evaluate her life after doctors declare her knee unfit for dancing. At the behest of her mother, Emma returns home to Sydney, where she discovers her affluent and loving grandmother, Beattie Blaxland, has left her an inheritance: Wildflower Hill, an old sheep farm in Tasmania. When Emma settles in temporarily to clean out Wildflower Hill and sell it, she discovers a photo of her grandmother...

The lives of three women on turn-of-the-20th-century San Miguel are shaped by ambition and circumstance, including the wife of a Civil War veteran who hopes to recover her health, her rebellious aspiring actress daughter and a librarian who wonders if the island's peace will endure in the face of looming war.