Someone at book club mentioned this title. It is a twist on the multigeneraltional family saga.
The precipitating event is the arrival of an unattended four-year-old girl on the dock at Maryborough, Queensland in 1913. She doesn't know who she is, and the harbormaster takes her home and he and his wife raise her as their own.
The story ranges from the story of that child as an adult trying to solve the mystery of her life, the events of the previous generation which brought her to Australia, and the story of her granddaughter who returns and puts all the pieces together.
The narrative follows three women, Eliza, Nell, and Cassandra, skipping Lesley, Cassandra's mother and taking an occasional look back at Georgianna, Eliza's mother. Also tucked in are a few allegorical fairy tales written by Eliza. Each of the stories is told in chronological order, but the time slips freely among them. Surprisingly, the switches are not difficult to follow. When a part of one of the stories needs to be told Morton does it. She lets us see the parallels without beating us over the head with them.
Her one descent into literary "cuteness" is the inclusion of Frances Hodgson Burnett in a cameo role. I suspect that was a clue to the reader that she knew she was borrowing some plot elements from The Secret Garden.
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