When, at the urging of her dying mother, eighteen-year-old farm worker Mary Evans sails for the England in 1886 she has no idea that she has inherited her grand mother's heraldic title of Countess. Unused to the way of British aristocracy, and much to the consternation of her peers, she adjusts in her own way to deal with the authority, privileges and wealth that have been bestowed upon her.

Robin Bell is a retired teacher who lives on and manages the family dairy farm in Victoria, Australia, purchased by her grandfather in 1910.