War

1871. When Fergus Deagan's wife dies in childbirth, she makes him promise to take their family to Western Australia to join his brother Bram, also to marry again. She's right. His young sons and newborn daughter do need a mother's love and he needs something different. Disowned by her father for becoming pregnant, Cara Payton bears a stillborn baby. She's in deep despair, until a plea to wetnurse a motherless baby gives her life new purpose. When Fergus proposes marriage, she accepts. She respects him and is happy to stay with the baby she now loves. During the voyage to Australia, she and Fergus draw closer. Then her past rears its ugly head and they face a terrible crisis. When they finally get to Fremantle, Fergus and Bram, always rivals, struggle to make friends. To make matters worse, Bram has financial problems and there is no railway where Fergus can find engineering work. Can the two brothers solve their problems? Will the newcomers find a way to build a new life?

The Trader's Dream is the third novel in Anna Jacobs' wonderfully atmospheric new saga series 'The Traders', set in Europe, the Orient and Australia's Swan River Colony.Bram Deagan dreams of bringing his family from Ireland to join him in Australia, where he now runs a successful trading business.But when a typhus epidemic strikes Ireland, it leaves the Deagan family decimated. And, with other family members scattered round the world, it is left to Maura Deagan to look after her orphaned nieces and nephew.Forced to abandon her own ambitions, and unsure whether she is ready to become a mother-figure to three young children, Maura recognises that their only hope is to join Bram in far away Australia. So they set sail on the SS Delta, which will carry them there, via the newly opened Suez Canal.It is only when a storm throws her and fellow passenger Hugh Beaufort together that Maura realises this journey may also give her a chance to pursue a dream she set aside long ago - to have a family of her own. That is, until someone from Hugh's past threatens to jeopardise everything . . .