NEWSPAPER REVIEWS OF "DESIGNING FATE." LITERATURE. AN AUSTRALIAN
NOVEL. "Designing Fate," by John Sandes (Hodder and Stoughton,
London and New York). The well-known Australian journalist whose
previous efforts in the field of fiction was for the adaptation of
love-making to the aeroplane, has not achieved a distinctive
success in "Designing Fate;" but he has written a readable story.
The plot is somewhat feeble, and its culmination far-fetched, but
there is some bright descriptive writing and a narrative that
sustains the readers interest. The tale tells of the fortunes of
twin brothers, whose mother had, under stringent financial
pressure, sold one of her infants to the childless young wife of an
elderly squatter, left the other in the care of a fashionable
boarding-house keeper in Melbourne and disappeared. One boy,
Harold, was brought up as the son of the old squatter, the other,
Humphrey, as the nephew of the boarding-house keeper, neither
knowing his true name or history. But the mother, who had
disappeared, had never presented the L500 cheque which she received
for Harold, and Major McLean, the husband from whom she had run
away, had sought in vain to find traces of her. Ultimately the twin
brothers meet. Harold as a young squatter, Humphrey a surface hand
is an iron smelting establishment. Humphrey is "wanted" by the
Melbourne police on a charge (false, of course), of embezzlement as
a bank clerk; he has learned the truth, or something of the truth,
about his parentage, and is bent on finding out what has become of
his missing mother. He and Harold exchange confidences, and the
latter engages him as boundary rider; but a steamer is wrecked on
the coast near the run, and Humphrey volunteers to ask as amateur
diver to locate the wreck in deep water. He discovers, not the
steamer for which he is searching, but a 20 year old wreck, and
brings to the surface the jewel box of his dead mother, containing
all the clues and documents necessary to establish identities. The
missing mother, it appears, had left Melbourne for Sydney to
recover the baby she had sold, and her steamer had foundered with
all hands. This is where the title of the book "Designing Fate" is
meant to apply. The diving scenes are written up with much
conscientious attention to accuracy in detail, and the author in a
brief preface sets out that he did not invent the incident of a
diver looking for one wreck and discovering another. Such an
incident actually occurred during the search for the Elingamite
wreck off the Three Kings of Sydney Coast a few years ago. The best
chapter of the book is that in which smelting operations are
carried on at the Lithgow ironworks. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
General
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