AustLit

'Londoner Edith Middleton arrives in Sydney in the grip of the Depression and watches her last penny roll down the drain of that great wishing well, Australia. As her life pitches into abject poverty, she bears an illegitimate child on a sweatshop floor, a gifted boy who drags his reluctant mother through the hole in his heart to discover love that is at once fragile and cruel. Building a shell to shut out love and drinking to dull the pain of her loneliness, Edith flees to Melbourne and becomes the toast of a city in the midst of cultural upheaval as the radiant queen of her own "Wishing Well", one of the first truly European-style restaurants in Australia.' Source: www.laboite.com.au (Sighted 19/09/2008).