Kate Grenville 
Secret River 

This Man Booker Award Finalist and Commonwealth Prize-winner is an “unforgettable” tale of crime and survival in colonial Australia (Chicago Tribune).   In 1806 William Thornhill, an illiterate English bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep compassion, steals a load of wood and, as a part of his lenient sentence, is deported, along with his beloved wife, Sal, to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. The Secret River is the tale of William and Sal’s deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William’s gradual realization that if he wants to make a home for his family, he must forcibly take the land from the people who came before him.   Acclaimed around the world,  The Secret River is a “magnificent” work of historical fiction that “pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another’s doom” (The New Yorker).