A Town Like Alice

A Town Like Alice
First edition
AuthorNevil Shute
LanguageEnglish
GenreWar, romance
PublisherHeinemann
Publication date
1950
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Softcover)
Pages359 pp
ISBN978-0307474001

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.