Daughter of Australia is the first novel by Newtown resident Harmony Verna. Published by Kensington Books, and available to the public March 29, the novel is the culmination of five years of work by Ms Verna.

"I've had bits and pieces of this story in my head since I was a kid," said Ms Verna. As a child, she had a map of Australia on the wall of her room, "and I had circled the town of Leonora. I knew one day I would write about it."

Set in western Australia at the turn of the 20th Century,

Daughter of Australia follows the lives of Leonora, a child abandoned in the brutal Australian desert and rescued by a passing miner, and James, an Irish child left in the care of a Catholic orphanage since birth. Their lives become entwined when young Leonora is sent to live at the orphanage. Mute with grief and fear, Leonora finds a friend in James, now a sensitive 9-year-old longing for a reconnection to his Irish roots.

The bond is broken when Leonora is adopted by a wealthy American family, growing up in an environment of prosperity - yet always longing for her home: Australia. An aunt and uncle, meanwhile, find out about James's existence, and emigrate from Ireland to Australia, to lay claim to their nephew. The result is a less than happy home for the young man, and a life of trying to make a living, farming the unforgiving Australian soil.

Fate has a young and unhappily wed Leonora following her new husband to Australia, where he oversees the family-owned mine - and the ranch where two young men arrive to manage the property. One of them is James, the only person who knows the secret of her roots. It is not long before Leonora and James realize that the bond they forged as children binds them still.

It is also the story of Ghan, the miner who rescued Leonora. His tale criss-crosses her path, time and again, though neither is ever consciously aware of this thread to the past.

"I think of Ghan as Leonora's guardian angel. He's my very favorite character, a battered, scarred man who has no real idea of his truth and beauty. He rescues her time and again," Ms Verna said. So strong was her connection to this character, that while her original plan was to jettison him from the novel after he finds Leonora in the desert, she felt compelled to weave him through the story.

Daughter of Australia is a saga of love - of a man and a woman, as well as for a country - and a story of perseverance, danger, jealousy, and inner strength. Woven into the narration, Ms Verna paints a picture of the land Down Under in words meant to draw the reader into the scene.

Creating scenes that are authentic is a challenge for any fiction writer, but the Australian outback brought to life in Ms Verna's writing is extraordinary, in that the author has never set foot in Australia.

"As far back as I can remember, I had a gut feeling of being connected to this country. I had dreams that were flashes of things, like a sign or a place. Dreams that were more like memories. As a child, I didn't realize what these were, but as an adult, I realized they were past life memories," said Ms Verna.

She did not intend to rely on just her intuition to recreate the landscape of this foreign country. "I didn't think I could write it until I went to Australia. I tried, three times, and it didn't work out. Finally," she said, "I realized I was meant to write this book before I ever visited Australia."

Five years ago, she sat down and began a year and a half of devoting the hours her three sons were in school to writing the novel. The process included a great deal of research. Knowing the story would revolve around a mining empire, she contacted the Gwalia Mining Museum in Australia for historical information on the gold rush of the early 20th Century.

"I found the whole mining industry very interesting. There were all these immigrants that came to the most inhospitable place on the planet to mine gold, and try to find their fortunes," she said.

She paged through numerous books of photography, and in order to understand the cadence of the language, she read Australian poetry.

It took a long time to evolve each of her characters, said Ms Verna, but she came to love each one. She came to know Leonora as a woman as strong as she could be in the circumstances. James, she said, is her vision of "the perfect man. He's strong, brave, sensitive, and caring. Even when I was not writing, I heard them talking. It was like I gave birth to these people, and then, when I finished the book, it was hard to say goodbye."

The descriptions of the land were a gift, she said.

"The only way I can say it is, I 'felt' it. I'd close my eyes and the landscape descriptions truly came from something deep inside of me," Ms Verna said. She judges the accuracy by the reaction she has received from the Harlequin Publisher's team in Australia, where

Daughter of Australia will also be released on March 29.

"They wanted to know when I had visited Australia. The team there could not believe I'd never been there," she said.

There were other challenges in writing the novel.

"Because I was working with both Australian and American scenes, I had to keep in mind they are two different seasons, and any references [to weather] had to be the opposite. I also had to do historical background of both countries, in order to have an accurate timeline," said Ms Verna. Linking all the puzzle's pieces of the story together was a test of her writing skills, as was whittling the book down from its original 900 pages to half that.

The decision to place the tale in the turn of the 20th Century came from her love of historical fiction.

"I think this was such an important time in mining in western Australia. It was such a fascinating time period, and an innocent time, before war broke out. I like the feeling of stepping back in time," she said.

As a freelance writer, Ms Verna has written scripts for television, and published articles in

Modern Bride Magazine, Connecticut Woman Magazine, and other publications. She has spent 20 years in the communications business. Writing novels, she said, is much more fulfilling.

"The other writing I did for a living. This I did because I loved it," she said.

She is thrilled that in addition to its release in America and Australia,

Daughter of Australia will also be released at a later date in Germany, France, and Greece.

"I would not be publishing overseas if I had self-published," she said, and may never have reached the point of publication, at all. "When you go the route of traditional publishing, you have the freedom to write and the expertise of a whole team behind you."

Finding the right agent and publishing company was a time consuming search between finishing the book and its publication. However, it is a decision, she said, along with finding a great agent, that has worked out well for her.

"This is a dream come true," said Ms Verna.

She has not set aside her love of writing fiction. Her second novel,

Beneath The Apple Leaves, will be published in June 2017. Set in Pennsylvania, it is a historical fiction of the lives of German immigrants "who trade in a lucrative life with the Pennsylvania Railroad for a life in rural Pennsylvania," during the era of World War I. Loosely based on her family history, Ms Verna suspects this one might present less of a challenge in setting the scene - Pennsylvania is her home state.

Daughter of Australia

will be available for purchase in area bookstores and online beginning March 29. Ms Verna will be at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 15 Backus Avenue in Danbury, for a book signing on Sunday, May 8, at 2 pm. For more information, visit harmonyverna.com.