Essie Summers. Bachelors Galore. London: Mills & Boon, 1958.
Set in mid and south Canterbury, Essie Summers wrote her second novel, Bachelors Galore, at a parish in Rakaia. Its premise dropped into her lap, for her publisher told her of the Mazengarb report and its promotion of the (then) surplus of bachelors in New Zealand. Born a Cantabrian, she relished describing the province's plains, foothills and high country adjoining the majestic Southern Alps. Her novels contain lyrical tributes to the Alps, but such terrain also means Canterbury’s rural locations may be affected by severe weather and the isolation that results.
