Book excerpt: In 1814, Dorothea Brande leaves the quiet harmony of her Devonshire home and accompanies her officer husband, Charles, to the colony of New South Wales. Here she endeavours to escape the harshness of the landscape - and the appalling brutality of common existence - by cultivating an English garden with the help of her convict manservant, Daniel. Together, in the creation of this garden, two bereft and disoriented people find a new strength and a special kind of refuge. But while Dorothea begins to adapt to the unforgiving environment, her husband is increasingly destroyed by it - until at last they stand on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gulf.