The Secret River

Raised amid poverty and small crime in London's slums, William Thornhill works the Thames as a waterman and marries Sal, the girl he grew up with. Their life is hard but manageable until 1806, when a single serious error leads to his transportation, with Sal and the children, to New South Wales for life. At first the colony feels like a sentence of death, yet the convicts whisper that liberty can be purchased. Thornhill fixes on a stretch of land beside the Hawkesbury River that he believes no one owns, only to discover that Aboriginal people already live on it; as old and new inhabitants face each other across a widening divide, he is driven towards the hardest choice he has ever made.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, Australia

First published

2005

Author's age

55 when first published

ISBN

9781920885755 (Text Publishing, Australia)

9781841957975 (Canongate U.S., United States)

9781841956824 (Canongate, United Kingdom)

9781841958286 (Canongate, United Kingdom)

9781841959146 (Grove Press, United States)

9781922147424 (Text Publishing, Australia)

9781782118879 (Canongate, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata