Inspired by the vast expanse of rural Australia with everyone and everything that lies therein, Barbara Hartmann King takes us on a trip back to the 1900s – where the world’s conflicts and passions shape a developing nation’s history. Barbara sets us on a journey that we will never forget; through her brilliant combination of vivid descriptions of the Australian Bush, and her true-to-life characters weave spell-binding journeys where the spirit of the times illuminate the heart.
Barbara’s Coloured Sands trilogy takes the reader on a journey through three interconnected yet distinct tales. She has combined historical reality with fiction, touching on the duplicity of life with love and intimacy, threatened by jealously and hate and every emotion in between. These exhilarating journeys through many lives is story-telling at its best.
The first novel, Coloured Sands, tells us the life-story of Emily, a young girl who is the sole survivor of a tribal dispute. She is known as the crazy orphan and is saved from an institution with the help of a staunch policeman and a famous doctor. She pushes forward in her struggle for sanity and love and finally has to face the tragedy of a delicate secret which explodes into a new era.
In Valley of the Eagle, Barbara provides us with the avenue to explore the Australian countryside in all its mystery and glory. Moreover, it unfolds a story of love and retribution in a story intertwined with the region's indigenous inhabitants. Here, the past haunts the present with its specter, decisively playing a role in pushing the narrative forward, and leaves us asking how the story will end with each swiftly turned page of the book.
The Children of the Coloured Sands is the final book in the chain of events sparked by the first and second novels and explores how and to what end the joining of the fates of the two worlds awaits our beloved characters. Here, the tragic secret perpetrated by Emily’s son takes center stage to become a vital piece in tailoring the extraordinary bigger picture of the trilogy.
Barbara accomplishes an exceptional feat as we now live in extraordinary times – increasing political and civil unrest, economic decline, rising racism, and a pandemic that seems to have no end. We are taken elsewhere, to a place where we otherwise could not, to stories wherein similar fears and uncertainties hound the characters. The Coloured Sands trilogy offers us to view things in a different light: to see the silver lining in something, to continue to hope, and to allow love and the will to overcome adversity to conquer it all.
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