The Gum Trees Are Dancing

Growing up in the 1930s, Lizzie Smythe soon becomes aware of a world way beyond the seemingly far horizons of the Australian sheep station that is her home. Family memories of Bohemian life long ago in distant cities surface and Lizzie begins to piece together a portrait of her mother very different from the image she has been encouraged to believe in. Yet despite the vastness of the Australian landscape, and enduring connections to the Mother Country on the far side of the globe, the claustrophobic intensity of family relationships is almost unbearable. She and her brother Erik share a love that is uncomfortably heady and fervent; while their mother`s descent into alcoholism has tragic consequences - and not just for the immediate family. When Lizzie`s great musical talent takes her to Sydney and then London, she learns even more about her mother`s secret, stormy past - which her own life begins to mirror. Yet this is only the beginning of a saga of emotional upheavals that will span generations and disrupt the lives of all who come in contact with the Smythe family. The outbreak of the Second World War unleashes even stronger passions... The Gum Trees Are Dancing is an epic that combines the headlong sweep of romantic fiction with an uncommonly deep understanding of the dynamics within relationships.