The Secret River (2006) by Orange
Prize-winning author Kate Grenville is a provocative novel of the settlement of
New South Wales by exiled British criminals. It is the illuminating story of
husband, father and petty thief William Thornhill and the path he followed from
the utter poverty of the slums of London to prison and finally freedom. When he
sentenced to death for stealing some lumber his sentence of death is commuted
to transportation to Australia with his pregnant wife, Sal, and a flock of
children.
Thornhill leads a
life of convict servitude, the fate of all those transported to the new British
colony, and gradually works his way through the penal system until he
transforms himself into a trader on the Hawkesbury River. He regularly sails by
an appealing piece of virgin soil and when he gains his freedom he and his
family move onto the land, raise another rude hut and begin to cultivate corn.
But he soon realizes
the British are not the first people to settle in New South Wales and he and
his family forge a tenuous coexistence with a small band of Aborigines camping
nearby. The uneasy relationship is shattered by violence by other settlers on
the river and Thornhill is drawn into the storm against his will.
Review by Peter Critchley of the Vernon Branch
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