Alexis

About the Book

This is the tightly-woven story of Eliza Durbeyfield, trapped in a marriage of convenience, who, confined by the constrictive role of women in late Victorian England, stifles her own hopes and dreams. She reluctantly emigrates from her small village in the West Country to the Illawarra district of New South Wales on the far continent of Australia, as told by a masterful storyteller who details the rich fabric of that voyage, both physical and emotional. Eliza must transcend temptations, setbacks, and disappointment before finally reaching safe harbour.

As well, it is the story of the shadowy Alexis who exerts a powerful influence on Eliza. It is not until Eliza acts on an urgent letter from home that she begins to unravel the mystery of Alexis and the dark secrets that have long haunted the lives of all she leaves in her wake. Eliza discovers how past deeds have a direct effect on those who come after and how the dead still rule the living from beyond the grave.

It is Eliza's quest to find true happiness, and the long-closed doors she opens, that provide the story with vivid detail, which gives us a hero who is long remembered after the last page is turned.

About the Author

Pamela Fulton grew up on the North Shore of Sydney and trained as an occupational therapist. She left Australia in 1967, beginning her own journey of discovery, and has traveled widely over land, sea and sky, being particularly interested in literature, photography, genealogy, gardening and cuisine, all of which percolate through the story.

This latest work, Alexis, is Fulton's first novel and third publication. Geographic Place Names of New Brunswick: A Zany Gazetteer was published by Non-Entity Press, Fredericton, in 1992; and her English Master's thesis at the University of New Brunswick was published by Melbourne University Press in their Miegunyah series in 2000. In The Minerva Journal of John Washington Price: A Voyage from Cork, Ireland, to Sydney, New South Wales, 1798-1800, Fulton transcribes and edits the daily journal kept by the young ship's surgeon on a convict transport carrying the first political prisoners from the Irish Rebellion.

A member of the "Ice House Gang" in the late 60's and early 70's, a group of creative writers who met weekly in the former ice house at the University of New Brunswick, she has won literary awards for non-fiction and poetry; been published in the Fiddlehead; and her lyrics were chosen by a composer and broadcast on CBC's "Sounds Like Canada".

She has lived and worked in Alberta, Ontario and Fredericton, New Brunswick where she now resides; and she may well have based her story on her own journey of self-discovery.