Wildflower Hill
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4.3 • 19 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
'A gorgeous story of family and secrets and the redemptive power of love' - Kate Morton, bestselling author of The Distant Hours and The Forgotten Garden.
From the class divisions of depression-era Glasgow, to the rolling pastures of a rural Tasmanian sheep farm. An unforgettable story of passion, love, secrets and loss.
Beattie: Glasgow, 1929
Beattie Blaxland had dreams. Big dreams. She dreamed of a life of fashion and fabrics. One thing she never dreamed was that she would find herself pregnant to her married lover, just before her nineteenth birthday.
Emma: London, 2009
Emma Blaxland-Hunter was living her dream. A prima ballerina with the London Ballet, she had everything ... until the moment she lost it all.
Separated by decades, both women must find the strength to rebuild their lives. A legacy from one to the other will lead to Wildflower Hill, a place where a woman can learn to stand alone long enough to realise what she really wants.
'The reader is helpless to do anything but turn the page' - Australian Bookseller & Publisher
'A story of overwhelming love and heart-cracking loss that will keep you transfixed' - Who Weekly
'Utterly engaging' - Courier Mail
'Evocatively written story ... about secret pregnancy and forbidden love' - Australian Women's Weekly
Author Biography
Kimberley Freeman was born in London and grew up in Brisbane. She is the author of Duet (2007), winner of the Ruby Award, Gold Dust (2008), Wildflower Hill (2010), Lighthouse Bay (2012), Ember Island (2013) and Evergreen Falls (2014). Her bestselling books have been translated into over twelve languages.
For more information visit facebook.com/KimberleyFreemanAuthor, read her blog on kimberleyfreeman.com or follow her on twitter.com/KimberleyTweets.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We couldn’t stop reading this moving family saga about two women: Beattie Blaxland, a poor, pregnant Scottish girl who migrates to Australia in the 1930s, and Emma Blaxland-Hunter, Beattie’s granddaughter and a prima ballerina. While the story has a quiet beginning, but the plot ramps up once single mother Beattie travels across the globe and finds employment at a Tasmanian sheep station, Wildflower Hill. On the remote plains, Beattie finds courage and wages a bet that changes her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Freeman's debut novel, 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 with a mysterious child. Determined to discover the girl's identity, Emma is pulled closer to Wildflower Hill's sordid history and ultimately, her grandmother's untidy secrets. In this sentimental narrative, readers learn the answers to Emma's questions just as she begins to ask them, which makes for a fairly predictable read. The novel's strength instead lies in Freeman's complex characters capable of love and hate, shame and redemption. Both Beattie and Emma find themselves having to start over, and it is for these two women that readers cheer and sympathize.
Customer Reviews
Wildflower Hill
Superb read, hard to put down, hoped for more at the end!