Imogen Quade desperately wants to possess Selbury Quade, her family's sixteenth-century estate. When a brother is born, she goes to great lengths to take his inheritance from him.
Barbara Ker Wilson was born on 24 September 1929 in Sunderland, in the north of England. In 1964 she immigrated to Australia, living first in Adelaide, then Melbourne, then Sydney. She settled in Leura, in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.
As a child she used to accompany her father to a large publishing office in London, to deliver corrected proofs of his latest engineering textbook, and she knew then that she wanted to work in the world of writing and publishing. Her first 'successful' work, written when she was eight, was a play based on the coronation of King George VI; it was performed at her primary school in England.
The Second World War influenced her greatly, particularly the experience of living through air raids in London. With the end of the war came her first experience of travelling abroad; afterwards, she traveled extensively in Europe and Asia.