The Dreaming: Barbara Wood (engl.) 495 S.

In 1871, a ship sails into Melbourne Harbor, bringing Joanna Drury to Australia. She has come to find property left to her by her mother -- and also to trace mysterious aspects of her mother's past, a past that has begun to haunt Joanna's life and dreams.

Joanna meets fascinating Hugh Westbrook whose sheep station, Merinda, is developing into a vast frontier empire, and she falls deeply in love with him. But increasingly her life is plagued by peculiar reversals, and Joanna notices that Aborigines react to her in strange ways. With the help of a young native girl named Sarah, Joanna begins to delve into Australia's past and to search out the tragic events that have marked her family's destiny, and her own life -- events that happened long ago, back in the time the Aborigines call "the dreaming.

What the critics say:

"A Great Summer book.  It has everything - good characters, love, adventure, mystery and mysticism."  - Los Angeles Daily News

"Magnificent . . . everything a historical novel should be: Big, Bold, with larger-than-life characters chasing their dreams, and demons with equal fervor.  THE DREAMING has all that and more."  - Orange Coast Magazine