The Unexpected Heiress A family saga from concentration camp by George Mallory

Title: The Unexpected Heiress: A family saga from concentration camp to a gold mining empire to a gold mining empire

Author: George Mallory

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: The Erudite Pen

Published: March 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 350

Price: $29.95

Synopsis: The human spirit’s resilience in the face of adversity takes centre stage in The Unexpected Heiress. This enthralling family saga follows one man’s journey from the horrors of a Polish concentration camp to the top of the Forbes Australia rich list. 

Abe Silver arrived in the lucky country with literally only a shirt on his back. Fast forward and he is the founder and the majority owner of multi-billion-dollar gold mining conglomerate, Poisson Gold Limited.

In a twist of fate, Abe’s galloping terminal cancer forces him to disinherit the son he has groomed as his successor and thrust the management of colossal riches to his daughter Ellie.

Shocked Ellie, a budding lawyer busy building her own career, promises to execute Abe’s wishes. Being the ‘chosen one’ unveils a toxic legacy of ambition, betrayal, and buried secrets in a deeply dysfunctional family.

As a grieving daughter, Ellie grapples with her newfound responsibilities. She confronts the opposition of her family, the constraints of the glass ceiling, and her deeply hidden secret – her sexuality. 

Set against the iconic backdrop of Sydney Harbour in 2010, a time of scarce LGBTQ+ acceptance, Ellie’s journey adds a poignant layer of complexity to this riveting ‘rags to riches’ tale.

The Unexpected Heiress transcends time and weaves horrors from World War II with present-day challenges.  From Abe’s harrowing past to Ellie’s contemporary struggles, an embittered brother, a vacuous globetrotting socialite mother, and the betrayal of a much-loved kid brother, the novel paints a vivid portrait of a family divided by loyalties, lies and the enduring power of love.

~*~

Abe Silver survived a concentration camp and World War Two, made it to Australia, and started a successful mining company and had a family – and everything is going well. Oldest son Simon is set to take over the family company, and daughter Ellie is a budding lawyer, destined to start a career when her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer after a business trip to Ghana. As Abe watches the ways his children have worked: Simon, supposedly the heir but barely managing, youngest Davey, who was raised by Ellie and nannies, and only daughter Ellie – the one who seems to have things together, who is working hard to overcome years of toxicity from her older brother and mother, and trying to come to terms with her own identity – is the one he will end up leaving his empire to. Yet in the wake of his death, as Ellie grapples with her new life, responsibilities, and threats from people who think she’s not qualified because she is a woman, she must also confront her sexuality and navigate a world that doesn’t like change.

Divided into two parts, with many reflections on the past during Abe’s chapters, the novel is a lengthy examination of family legacies, gender assumptions, and familial expectations where it seems that despite it being the twenty-first century, several of the characters, including Abe for a while, are convinced a woman cannot lead a company or business – a stereotype that I felt set the tone for the characters and plot, and the ways they responded throughout the latter half of the novel. Abe’s Jewish identity was also very strong – he lived in a world where he was a huge part of the Jewish community around him, and this came through eloquently as he met Ruth and during his funeral – we know he is dying from fairly early on in the book, so it’s an inevitability that the reader and the characters have to come to terms with as they each find out as the past and present start coming together – especially in a family where it seems some members see gender roles as very traditional and will do anything they can to hang onto it.

The story worked well enough – it had enough intrigue and depth so that things didn’t come across as too stereotypical, predictable or obvious, and making Simon and his wife not as well-rounded as Ellie, Abe, or Davey served the novel’s purpose – to show that each member of a family has different views, different perspectives, and responds to things differently, even when they have been raised in the same environment and home – and at the start of the novel, the entire family still lives in the same mansion, just in different wings. One thing that stood out as a little odd to me was Abe confiding in a total stranger – how did he know he could trust Ruth, and there was a small part of me that asked myself how did he know another member of his family did not know her through a connection that wasn’t him? This aspect made sense later on though when Ruth’s purpose and role became clearer. Abe lives in a world and heads a company where it seems social inequity, social prejudices and discrimination are – at least in the context of the novel – shown to be common and expected. This only spurred the zest of the novel on – the fight that Ellie had to have to show her brother that being male didn’t automatically make him more capable than her, and this felt like the strongest part of the novel.

Sydney Harbour is also a huge character in this novel, shown in its grit and glory as the novel progresses, and what different parts of the city can be like. Social prejudices of all kinds – such as those against LGBTQIA people – are littered throughout, and this aspect allows Ellie to come to terms with her sexuality in light of tragedy. The pacing around some of the tragedy felt like it happened quite quickly, as they were meant to destabilise Ellie’s character – something that perhaps Simon hoped for, but the author didn’t intend. Overall, I think this novel had things that people will enjoy, as it shines a light on what it is like to come from a family legacy and have that legacy fall on your shoulders, and the need to fight to keep it, the desire to shine a light on the different ways people are discriminated against by people who know them and people who don’t.