The Light Horseman's Daughter

While resisting eviction from the Queensland family property at the start of the Great Depression, Emma McKenna's father is shot dead. Emma is left destitute, with her crippled mother and twelve-year-old twin brothers to care for. But she is not easily defeated and fights back.
In her struggle to survive she must overcome, heartless wealthy relatives, racial bigotry, child abuse, corrupt financiers and choose between the love of two very different men: one a wealthy Sydney lawyer involved with the New Guard, a paramilitary anti-communist movement, and the other, a persecuted and penniless left-wing activist.
The Light Horseman's Daughter offers a panoramic view of Australia in the 1930's—the big landowners of the outback, the corrupt bankers who supported them, the well-heeled elite of Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs, the abject poverty of the victims of the Depression, the idealists who joined the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War .
This award-winning novel weaves all this into a riveting story with the human element at its heart. Emma McKenna is a heroine to remember