[1] The novel follows the story of Shannon Hicks, a country girl who arrives in Sydney just before the outbreak of World War II and proceeds to make her way through city life.
The reviewer in The Advertiser found a lot to like but not much plot: "there is much that is genuinely interesting in the book: a great deal of rather malicious humor.
Miss Tennant displays all those qualities which placed her, in 1935, in the front rank of Australian writers of fiction.
The reader will meet here an assortment of easily comprehensible and fantastic men and women, equal in colour and variety to those met in "Foveaux" and "The Battlers."
The mini-series was screened over 4 episodes and was directed by Carl Schultz, from a script by Peter Yeldham, and featured Liddy Clark, Noni Hazlehurst, and Henri Szeps.