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,
Alice the Goon threatens to throw Alice off a cliff, until her child (also of unspecified sex) appears and shouts, "Mama!" Realizing that he is fighting a woman, which goes against his principles, Popeye releases Alice and discovers that she became the Sea Hag's slave only because the Hag had threatened her baby. Alice is the leader of a race of goons enslaved by the Sea Hag; Popeye and Alice lead them in a successful Spartacus-like slave rebellion. At the time, Alice caused controversy with protective mothers, who claimed that her frightening appearance alarmed their children. Alice was therefore toned down to become