A Greater World

Literature & Fiction

synopsis

Synopsis

She crossed the world to marry a stranger but fell in love with someone else When Elizabeth Morton’s father wants her to travel to the other side of the world to marry a stranger, she thinks he’s gone mad. This is 1920 and a woman has rights - she's not going to be subject to an arranged marriage. But she's reckoned without the brother-in-law she's always despised, who shatters her comfortable world, leaving her no choice but to sail to Australia. When Michael Winterbourne, a lead miner wakes up with a hangover after his engagement celebrations, he has no idea he is about to cause a terrible tragedy that will change his life and destroy his family. When Michael and Elizabeth meet on the SS Historic, bound for Sydney, they are reluctant emigrants from England. They hope their troubles are over, but they're only just beginning. A Greater World is a historical romance set in the early 1920s. The story moves from the dales of Cumberland and the docks of Liverpool to Sydney and the beautiful Blue Mountains.

bio

Author Biography

Clare Flynn writes historical fiction with compelling characters.and a strong sense of time and place. Her books often deal with characters who are displaced - forced out of their comfortable lives and familiar surroundings. She is a graduate of Manchester University where she read English Language and Literature. After a career in international marketing, working on brands from nappies to tinned tuna and living in Paris, Milan, Brussels and Sydney, she ran her own consulting business for 15 years and now lives in Eastbourne where she writes full-time – and can look out of her window and see the sea. When not writing and reading, Clare loves to paint with watercolours and grabs any available opportunity to travel - sometimes under the guise of research.

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Author Insight

Sailing Down Under

Michael and Elizabeth sail from Liverpool to Sydney on a fictional ship the SS Historic. I chose the name so it would fit with the other ships on the White Star line with their IC endings – the most famous of which was the Titanic, but closely based the Historic on a real ship, the Ceramic. The Ceramic was unusual in that it was a single class vessel with no segregation of passengers. This enabled Michael and Elizabeth to meet – something that would never have happened normally given their different backgrounds. The Ceramic met an unhappy fate when torpedoed in mid Atlantic by a U-boat in December 1942. The ship sank and the passengers, a mix of service personnel, nurses and civilians, evacuated into lifeboats but a heavy storm blew up and only one man survived, taken prisoner by the submarine that sank them.

Book Excerpt

A Greater World

He was in luck and got himself a berth on the SS Historic to Sydney via Tenerife and Cape Town. He stood on the dockside looking up at the vessel, patting his pocket with the ticket inside. A passing sailor addressed him. 'You sailing on the Historic, mate?'

Michael nodded.

'She's a good little ship. Only just back to doing passenger trips. Troop carrier during the war.' The pride in the sailor's voice was evident.

'It's hardly a little ship!' Michael felt dwarfed by it. It towered above him, making it hard to believe that it was a boat, not a building.

'Sailed before, mate?'

'To and from France. But the boat were tiny compared to this monster!'

The sailor pointed out the four masts and the central funnel 'Four sticks and a stack. Built in Belfast. Nearly nineteen thousand tons. She can carry six hundred passengers. Not to mention tons of cargo. A real beauty.'

'I've not seen owt like it!'

'Wait till you get on board. There's a couple of salt-water swimming baths and a gymnasium. You're going on yer holidays, mate!'

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Clare Flynn

A Greater World

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Sailing Down Under

Book Excerpt

A Greater World

Comment on this Bubble