'In The Commandant, the reader suspects from the earliest pages that some momentous fate awaits Captain Logan, the Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement. The official version of the terrible events that happened in Moreton Bay in the 1830s was that Captain Logan was murdered by Aborigines while on an exploring expedition. Anderson's novel probes other possibilities. Although Captain Logan is the main character in the book, the story is seen mainly through the eyes of his sister-in-law Frances, who is different from him in every way: she is powerless, sensitive, and naive. Her perspective helps to give us a keen sense of what it was like to live in the colony at that time.' (Introduction)
