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Great Land of Dreams
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Plot Summary of Great Land of Dreams
"Sentenced to hang at age 9, Maggie's flight from 1830s Scotland incurs a violent odyssey to womanhood. She encounters English gentry sailing to create an Eden in a wilderness at the far end of the world.

Lauded as "a second America", Britain's Swan River Colony is intended to restore class barriers and plantations that were lost with America's independence. But deceit and murder rule instead, and the settlers slaughter the primitive Aborigines of Western Australia and establish a tyranny under a brutal police chief.

Stung to action, Maggie now a young woman crusades for justice in the new land, with alarming consequence. The trouble is she has grown up self-educating herself from books. This self-taught, but incomplete wisdom fuels her actions and the plot."

Charles Bryce, Resident Scholar

Review Analysis of Great Land of Dreams
Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book? - upbeat
Time/era of story - 19th century
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Exploring into the wild Yes
kind of story - colonizing/settling in new area

Main Character
Gender - Female
Profession/status: - servant
Age: - a kid
Ethnicity/Nationality - British
How sensitive is this character? - sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Average intelligence
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - Male
Age: - 40's-50's
Profession/status: - navy soldier
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - an average amount
How sensitive is this character? - mean, arrogant
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - bulging muscles

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? - 7 (a good amount)
Ice Caps/Sea? Yes
Where? - Ocean
Island? Yes
Island: - naive Brooke Shields-ish virgin
Small town? Yes
Small town people: - hostile, like Gomer Pyle on steroids
Misc setting - fort/military installation

Style
Person - mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death? - very explicit references to deaths and torture
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - touching of anatomy - descript. of nude males (the big P)
Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
Most similar books to Great Land of Dreams
A Lantern In Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard


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John Ivor Resident Scholar Profiles

TOP SCHOLAR:
  
Charles Bryce  

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