A 15-year-old Scottish tenant farmer form the Isle of Mull leaves his mentally deficient older brother and widowed mother to join the British Army to support his family. From that humble beginning he would go on to serve with distinction in the West Indies, India, ending up as the governor of New South Wales and father of Australia. Along the way he meets his first wife Jane who dies in South-East Asia; acquires an Indian major-domo Bapoo; his wife's maid Marianne; and a slave boy whom he steals at gunpoint in a slave market where he is being whipped. The boy was adored on sight by Lachlan's wife and given the name George and his wife's maiden name Jarvis. Stationed back in England he brings the boy with him and sends him off to private school. Confronted with his choices for the future an ethnic if not practicing Indian Moslem pulls a copy of the Christian Bible foisted upon him at school and quotes the book of Ruth:
"Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me."
in answer to a suggestion he return to India to avoid discrimination.
In the hands of a skilled writer such as this dry historical facts come to life and the characters jump off the page, or tablet as in my case. Book one of this trilogy by Gretta Curran Browne was offered free--I read it in one day; book two--The Far Horizon I bought and began reading last night; book three--Jarvisfield is yet to be published.
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