title: Era of Understanding
author: McMillan, Stella
description: ERA of UNDERSTANDING is the third book in the Stella McMillan seven-book Series. It concludes the first trilogy, which followed the lives of Louisa, Sylvia, Elizabeth and Charles in Victorian Victoria, in Australia, from 1867 until the commencement of WW1 in 1914. Following on from the car accident that almost claimed her life in 1999, Paula reverts to an earlier lifetime in nineteenth century Australia. Here, she becomes the silent witness as she observes all of the events that happen in the lives of these Victorian Victorians at that time. She cannot understand why it all seems so familiar to her. She knows these people. They were around her in that previous lifetime as they are around her now as the twenty-first century looms on her horizon. Paula drifts between realities as her physical body fights for life in a hospital on the Gold Coast in Australia. Her current life in Los Angeles, with her husband and her young son, have slipped from her consciousness while she regresses to this earlier time-frame in a country that is foreign to her now. Oblivious to her own predicament and to her present life in America, she remains transfixed as she views from afar the lives of these women as they interact with the one man, Charles Lyndhurst, a wealthy ship-owner. She watches the young Louisa as she battles to remain her own person as Charles attempts to bend her to his will. Paula knows the pain and the love that Sylvia experiences in her relationship with Charles. And, with Elizabeth, she knows the deep love of a mother for her child. These events play out to their final conclusion in this male-dominated Victorian society. However, Paula cannot drift forever in this safe, surreal world where she chose to linger after the accident. For the moment, she is content to focus her undivided attention on these Victorian Victorians, thereby delaying her own inevitable moment-of-truth for just a little longer. Eventually, she will be forced to face up to her own needs and circumstances. This is Paula's dilemma now. In that earlier period, Paula observes Louisa as she fights valiantly against all of the restrictions that are forced upon her in her arranged marriage to Charles. Sylvia's relationship with Charles is a long-standing one and her love for him is all-consuming, despite her recent marriage to another man. Her new husband takes her to his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, but her home is calling her back to Melbourne. Elizabeth, with assistance from her son, Charles, manages to escape her imprisonment on a rural property and she returns to her English home. Eventually, she comes back to her family in Melbourne as tragedy strikes there. Paula knows them all oh-so-well