The Orange Prize–winning author Kate Grenville recalls her family's history in an astounding novel about the pioneers of New South Wales. Already a best seller in Australia (where it was published in 2005), The Secret River is the story of Grenville’s ancestors, who wrested a new life from the alien terrain of Australia and its native people.
William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, is deported to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia in 1806. In this new world of convicts and charlatans, Thornhill tries to pull his family into a position of power and comfort. When he rounds a bend in the Hawkesbury River and sees a gentle slope of land, he becomes determined to make the place his own. But, as uninhabited as the island appears, Australia is full of native people, and they do not take kindly to Thornhill’s theft of their home.
The Secret River is the tale of Thornhill's deep love for his small corner of the new world, and his slow realization that if he wants to settle there, he must ally himself with the most despicable of the white settlers, and to keep his family safe, he must permit terrifying cruelty to come to innocent people.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
"The Secret River is a sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss, competing distresses and the impossibility of making amends." - The Guardian (UK)
"It is to Kate Grenville's credit that she never surrenders her sense of the individual faces she captures as she tells this story. I suspect a lot of readers are going to find this book both subtle and satisfying." - The Age (Australia)
"The Secret River, Grenville has written a book that will satisfy her critics' craving for more action, while seeking the bloody source of her relationship with Australia." - The Telegraph (UK)
"The most remarkable quality of Kate Grenville's new novel is the way it conveys the enormous tragedy of Australia's founding through the moral compromises of a single ordinary man. The Secret River reminds us that national history may be recorded as a succession of larger-than-life leaders and battles, but in fact a country arises from the accretion of personal dreams, private sacrifices and, often, hidden acts of cruelty." - The Washington Post
"Grenville's story illuminates a lesser-known part of history-at least to American readers-with sharp prose and a vivid frontier family." - Publishers Weekly
"Grenville's best, and a giant leap forward." - Kirkus Reviews
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