Pocket Star
September 2004
On Sale: August 31, 2004
Featuring: Alexander Kinross
624 pages ISBN: 0671024191 EAN: 9780671024192 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
Not since The Thorn Birds has Colleen McCullough
written a novel of such broad appeal about a family and the
Australian experience as The Touch.
At its center
is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a young man in his
native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice
and a 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 gold
fields 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 great
house, with no company save Chinese servants, Elizabeth
finds that the intimacies of marriage do not prompt her
husband to enlighten her about his past life -- or even his
present one. She has no idea that he still has a mistress,
the sensual, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander
has established in his town, nor that he has also made Ruby
a partner in his company, rapidly expanding its interests
far beyond gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the
head of the beleaguered Chinese community; the boy becomes
dear to Alexander, who fosters his education as a
gentleman.
Captured by the very different natures of
Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have both of them.
Why should he not? He has the fabled "Midas Touch" -- a
combination of curiosity, boldness and intelligence that he
applies to every situation, and which fails him only when it
comes to these two women.
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 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.
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