Phoeba Crupp is a young woman who lives with her parents and sister on a small farm near Geelong in the 1890s. Her father is an eccentric ex-accountant who moved his family from the city in order to establish a vineyard, a decision her mother bitterly - and loudly - resents.While her sister makes a play for the local squatter's son, Phoeba is content with her best friend Harriet, until circumstances push her towards the world of men and money. Summer at Mount Hope has a lot of the black comedy of Ham's first novel, The Dressmaker, but also contains a more serious strand about the efforts of a woman a century ago to be free.