AustLit

Publisher's blurb at back of book states:

ANNETTE OF RIVER BEND is a story that will go straight to the hearts of all young readers from the age of ten onwards. For Irene Cheyne ranks with L. M. Montgomery, Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce as a creator of vital, lovable characters that will live as real people for countless youngsters. Annette—sparkling, imaginative, impetuous and loyal—is youth itself, an Australian Pollyanna. And her story with its gaiety and humour, its pathos and mystery, has a charm that will enshrine it with the immortal Anne of Green Gables in the affections of the young at heart.

Annette is the motherless daughter of old Dick Linney, the richest and meanest man in River Bend, on the upper Murray. Old Dick doesn't care twopence for Annette, and goodness knows what would have become of her but for Bill Bluitt, the manager of the Golden Pineapple Cafe next door. He is her chief friend and mentor, and he it is who persuades Dick Linney to send her to a boarding-chool in Melbourne—to the great amazement of River Benders. But Bill has a strange power over old Dick, a power that goes back many years to a dramatic episode in old Dick's past.

All Irene Cheyne's people are so real that you feel like inviting them home to tea; but her chief creation is the child Annette. She should certainly be enthroned with the other heroines of juvenile literature.