The Guileless Governess
(2026)(Book 11 in the Australian Sandstone series)
A novel by Michael Beashel
London, 1880. Sydney, 1881. A woman who knows her own mind and a world determined to change it.
When Bridget Barrow attends a women's suffrage meeting in London, she makes a decision that will take her twelve thousand miles from everything she knows. Intelligent, principled, and quietly certain of her own convictions, she secures a governess position on Tambook Estate in the Hunter Valley of colonial New South Wales and steps into a world that will test every one of those convictions.
Her employer, Essington Tidenhurst, is a capable and respected man whose admiration for Bridget slowly hardens into something more controlling. Her dearest friend, Marion Webster, arrives in Sydney carrying a love Bridget cannot return. And Declan Connaire carpenter, mathematician, and the first man to engage her as an equal enters her life at precisely the wrong moment.
At the centre of it all is Briar Tidenhurst, an eleven-year-old girl of exceptional intelligence who has never known a mother, and whose fierce ambition to run Tambook mirrors Bridget's own belief that women can do anything men can. Their bond becomes the novel's emotional core and its most complicated relationship.
The Guileless Governess is a novel about the psychology of control, how it is exercised, how it is resisted, and what it costs a woman to remain honest when honesty itself becomes dangerous. Set against the richly rendered landscape of colonial New South Wales, it is a story of identity, courage, and the slow, hard work of choosing the right life.
Book 11 in The Australian Sandstone Series. Can be read as a standalone.
Genre: Historical
When Bridget Barrow attends a women's suffrage meeting in London, she makes a decision that will take her twelve thousand miles from everything she knows. Intelligent, principled, and quietly certain of her own convictions, she secures a governess position on Tambook Estate in the Hunter Valley of colonial New South Wales and steps into a world that will test every one of those convictions.
Her employer, Essington Tidenhurst, is a capable and respected man whose admiration for Bridget slowly hardens into something more controlling. Her dearest friend, Marion Webster, arrives in Sydney carrying a love Bridget cannot return. And Declan Connaire carpenter, mathematician, and the first man to engage her as an equal enters her life at precisely the wrong moment.
At the centre of it all is Briar Tidenhurst, an eleven-year-old girl of exceptional intelligence who has never known a mother, and whose fierce ambition to run Tambook mirrors Bridget's own belief that women can do anything men can. Their bond becomes the novel's emotional core and its most complicated relationship.
The Guileless Governess is a novel about the psychology of control, how it is exercised, how it is resisted, and what it costs a woman to remain honest when honesty itself becomes dangerous. Set against the richly rendered landscape of colonial New South Wales, it is a story of identity, courage, and the slow, hard work of choosing the right life.
Book 11 in The Australian Sandstone Series. Can be read as a standalone.
Genre: Historical