A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice (United States title: "The Legacy") is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community — to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs. The story falls broadly into three parts. In Post-World War II London,
A Sensation Novel outside it), hates Rockalda in the novel but is in love with Rockalda outside it, while Alice Grey, the pure, virginal heroine, who hates Ruthven in the novel, is confident, aggressive, independent and in love with Sir Ruthven outside it. In life, Alice hates Herbert and Herbert hates Alice. While they are in the novel, the characters are all miserable. Only during the few hours they get each night, free from the constraints of the authors' will, can they find even a little happiness. Therefore, they plot to work out how to prolong their time together and how to thwart