What does he really get? His heart’s desire – and it doesn’t take him forever to figure it out, either. At least, that what he thinks he’s getting. When he applies at Parramatta prison with this as his only criterion, Hayden is presented with a tall, skinny, vermin-ridden, mud-caked, hate-filled, haughty savage. If he cannot find someone to breastfeed his infant son, Simon, the baby will die. And now, she’s ready to go toe-to-toe with one magnificent man.

She has survived everything they could throw at her, yet still kept her pride in tact. Nobody will stop him nobody will care.ĭisheartened, but not defeated, Bryony Wentworth is all woman. Legally, he can rape her, whore her out, work her to death, or kill her outright. As a convict, Bryony will be forced into servitude for the length of her seven-year sentence to a man who can use her any way he wants. It’s been a year of sheer hell, and now, her cold-eyed, mordacious new master has come to claim her. Today, she has just buried her baby, Philip, in a sad and lonely grave. Bryony has spent long months in a dank, vermin-infested jail cell and then on a prison-scow bound for the New South Wales penal colony. She later learns her uncle has told the child Bryony is dead. But, she was pregnant, so got off “easy.” Her little girl, Madeline, was literally wrenched from her arms. For having been convicted of killing him, Bryony could have been burned at the stake or flogged to death. Like, well, Candice Proctor? Who’s that? This Night in Eden – it’s about a woman who killed her husband? Takes place in New South Wales? Isn’t that the old name for Australia, for god’s sake? Well, who wants to read a story about a non-virgin, mother-of-two, murdering, rag-clothed wet-nurse in the sweltering Outback? Waiter! I’ll have my usual, please.īryony Wentworth has lost everything.

I suppose I apply the same principles to new authors or stories that have an uncommon theme or locale. Then I’d be disappointed and wish I hadn’t experimented. I don’t want to waste my time, dollars, and calories on a meal I’ve never tried and that I might not like.

I don’t get a chance to eat out at elegant restaurants much, so when I go, I invariably choose a dish I’ve had before.

Night in Eden by Candice Proctor