Your cart is empty 
In this richly human historical romance, The Lyrebird Brooch, young Mathilda, the daughter of German migrants, wants to escape the stifling paternal structure of hard work and obedience that controls her family life in a Lutheran fruit-growing community near Melbourne in the late 1880s. While jeweller Wilhelm Lund provides an avenue to a new life in marriage, good fortune still remains out of reach for the young couple. The well-off folk of Beechworth hesitate to patronize his shop. As his shop flirts with bankruptcy, Will must take drastic action to keep his family solvent. Can Will and Mathilda reconcile domestic frugality with their tender burgeoning love? Neither they, nor the colony of Victoria, have anticipated the tragedy that the coming financial crash of 1893 will bring to their lives. Mathilda makes one terrible error that will challenge the survival of her small family. But, as women around her start to fight for their rights in the suffragette movement, Mathilda realizes that ultimately only she can determine the direction her future will take.
As an imaginative child, Christine Taylor hoarded her grandmother's tales of both achievement and tragedy as she ate warm scones and cakes in Ivanhoe on Sunday afternoons. Years later, whilst researching the integration of her German ancestors into the flourishing colony of Victoria, the story of a lead-lined coffin and the inheritance of a lyrebird brooch kindled the plot and themes of this historical novel. Christine attended Monash University and completed a Bachelor of Arts in history and literature, and later, while caring for her toddlers, a Bachelor of Education in psychology. During periods living in Germany, she delved into the background of her immigrant ancestors. After teaching English for twenty-one years at McKinnon Secondary College in Melbourne, including a period as head of English, she now enjoys writing fiction. She is grateful to the Lyceum Writers' group for their encouragement and to the following Victorian libraries for their assistance with archival materials: Beechworth Library, PMI Victoria History Library, Chiltern Atheneum Trust Museum and the State Library of Victoria. This is Christine's first published novel.
Sneak Preview
