Nicole Alexander, the 'heart of Australian storytelling', takes us on a captivating journey from the American Wild West to the wilds of outback Queensland, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, in an epic novel tracing one powerful but divided family.

It is Dallas 1886, and the Wade family is going from strength to strength: from a thriving newspaper and retail business in Texas to a sprawling sheep station half a world away in Queensland. Yet money and power cannot compensate for the tragedy that struck 23 years ago, when Joseph Wade was slaughtered and his seven-year-old daughter Philomena abducted by Apache Indians. Only her uncle, Aloysius, remains convinced that one day Philomena will return.

So when news reaches him that the legendary Geronimo has been captured, and a beautiful white woman discovered with him, he believes his prayers have been answered.

Little does he know that the seeds of disaster have just been sown.

Over the coming years three generations of Wade men will succumb to an obsession with three generations of mixed-blood Wade women: the courageous Philomena, her hot-headed grand-daughter Serena, and her gutsy great-granddaughter Abelena.

These three women struggle between two worlds and belonging to neither.

A sweeping saga spanning three generations, and two continents, Nicole Alexander's fifth novel, The Great Plains, is an absorbing tale of love, loss, betrayal, belonging and freedom.

It will captivate you and pull you in, and it will have you holding your breath until the final page.

This book is available to borrow from the Narromine Branch of the Macquarie Regional Library