Beyond Australia blog

Started July 31, 2024

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”

(novelist L.P. Hartley).

This blog will be called Beyond Australia. It’s not about Australia, but about a Young Adult novel that will be published next spring, Beyond Australia.

The book isn’t about Australia, either, but about fourteen year old Susan Ferguson’s trip even further away, to her own New York City in 1872. Freaked out when a time machine somehow deposits her back there, she thinks people would be paranoid about it, or worse, so she explains her strange clothes, odd use of words, and the fact she doesn’t know how to do anything by telling them she’s a visitor from Australia. She figures people rarely go to Australia, so no one is apt to catch her out for not having the right accent. She hopes. But the strange clothes are jeans and a button down shirt and her hair is bobbed, so people keep mistaking her for a boy. She goes along with it for safety.

Susan has always been an instinctive liar, perhaps to keep people like her mother from knowing what’s on her mind. But now she’s playing in the big leagues. Her health, her safety, staying clear of the police, and even her return home will depend on her skill—and some help from a couple new friends.

I’ll tell you more, but my purpose in writing this blog isn’t just to stir your interest, but to give you some background. Each post will focus on one aspect of the world in which Susan finds herself: New York City in the 1870s