AustLit

'Caroline Kearney was 31 years old when, in 1865, she found herself widowed, alone in a country far from home and responsible for six children. She had hoped that her sons would inherit the sheep farm they owned in the Wimmera in Victoria. But she had no rights to it herself. Her husband’s will offered a reasonable annuity to support her and the children. But it had a catch: for that support to be paid, she had to move to Ireland with her children and live with his brothers. English-born, she had migrated from there with her family when she was sixteen. She had never been to Ireland.

'This extraordinary story reveals so much about the nature of the law, property, family and women’s rights within the British Empire of the nineteenth century.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.