The Secret River

Twenty-nine year old, Englishman, William Thornhill is introduced in the book’s prologue. In 1806, he was being transported for petty theft, along with other criminals, to his Majesty’s penal colony in New South Wales, a state in Australia. His pregnant wife, Sal, and their young son accompanied him on the arduous ocean journey.In Part One, the story provided a glimpse into Thornhill’s impoverished childhood. He and his family lived in a hovel that also housed rodents and blood-sucking insects. To survive, he and his siblings often stole food.A scrappy kid, Thornhill wanted more out of life. He wanted to live in nearby Swan Lane, a quiet, sedate area where his sister’s friend, Sal Middleton, an only child, lived with her parents. He was determined to marry Sal when he became a ‘freeman.’Sal’s father offered 14 year-old Thornhill a seven-year apprenticeship as a waterman. At age 21, upon completing his apprenticeship, Thornhill became a freeman. He had attained a high level of knowledge and skill as a waterman, transporting English gentry, coal and wheat.A diligent, conscientious, competitive man, Thornhill became adept at interpreting the water’s currents, the sky, the wind, and effectively maneuvering his boat through the Thames. He used tact, maintained a good relationship with his customers, and developed into the most sought after waterman.It’s ironic that when Sal’s parents died, Thornhill discovered they didn’t own the home on Swan Lane. They had to move. Winter brought frigid weather. The Thames froze. Without employment, to survive, thieving became a necessary evil.Thornhill was caught pilfering Brazil wood from one of his customers. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced. With the tireless determination of a pregnant Sal, Thornhill barely missed the gallows. Instead, he was sentenced for his natural life to a penal colony.To Thornhill, Australia, land of a blistering, unforgiving sun felt like a noose around his neck. Yet Sal appeared more adaptable. She believed they would return to England someday. They lived in a hut, and although less than perfect, with discretion and her social graces, for a fee, Sal bantered with and dispensed rum to their neighbors that Thornhill procured from his job.On his friend, Tom Blackwood’s boat, Thornhill was attracted to the land, off the Hawkesbury River, almost a day away from he lived. It was a wild, tangled, desolate area, but had his ‘thumb print.’ In Thornhill’s mind, he knew ownership of his own land would never take place in England. He had won his freedom in Australia. He believed he could possess a broad expanse of land; his place, his own. In England, his children would be branded as offspring of a criminal, but not in Australia.The Thornhills moved to what Thornhill named Thornhill’s Point. He acquired two convict servants to help him till the land. He had achieved what was impossible in Europe, to have free possession of 100 acres of land.Of course nothing prepared the Thornhill’s or any of the English settlers for the Aborigines, nude, hunters-gatherers; a people that had resided in Australia from its earliest times, who had had no contact with the outside world.The Aborigines had a profound regard to areas where most of their hunting and gathering took place. They grew no crops, nor domesticated animals. They provided their food by hunting the animals on the land and the fish in the sea. Suddenly, they were confronted with a discriminatory, hostile force of English strangers.The Aborigines camped next to the Thornhills. Yet Thornhill couldn’t translate that they had violated his space.Sal, empathetic, attempted to be neighborly. She shared food and clothing with the women. She retained the thought of returning home to England in five years. However, Thornhill, a survivalist, had no intention of ever leaving.Thornhill kept secrets from Sal when he discovered that his vile neighbor, named Smasher, had chained a female Aborigine in his barn to assault, and for him and his friends’ lustful pleasure, and in an area called the Secret River, Thornhill found Aborigine families dead or dying of poison by English settlers, nor did he tell Sal a neighbor had been speared by the Aborigines. If he divulged this, he knew it would be grounds for Sal to leave Australia with their now five children.Desperate to stay on his land, a conflicted Thornhill joined other blood-thirsty settlers, who with hatred and extant bigotry forced the Aborigines in the immediate area off of their long-established homes.Once the Aborigines were removed, the Thornhills, unencumbered, like other settlers became wealthy landowners. Yet the Thornhills, who I believe were conscientious, never felt completely satisfied with all they had acquired.I gave this book three stars.In today’s society, it is frightening that people who are different because of their race or religion are still ill-treated by those who enjoy complete impunity. This reminded me of Nazi Germany’s racism in the 1930s and 40s and in the Deep South up to the 1950s and 60s where murder and sterilization still existed.For the record, Aborigines were placed on reservations. They were colonized until sometime in the 1970s.Settlers continued to poison, hunt, and shoot down Aborigines without infraction of the law. If Aborigines retaliated, entire families were massacred. During the early and middle twentieth century, colonists hoped the full-blooded Aborigines would die out. Aborigine women were sterilized without their consent. A biological solution was for half-caste Aborigine girls to be assimilated through intermarriage with Englishmen. These half-caste children were taken from their Aborigine mothers and placed in an orphanage for future assimilation and intermarriage. Although Aborigines still exist, they are near extinction.

A good historical novel illuminates the time in which it is set. It may convey information, but more importantly it shows it in a human context, putting the reader into the bodies and minds of the characters, feeling what it is like to live in that time and place, and sharing their personal dilemmas. Because it deals with human beings and human motives, the best historical fiction can thus confront moral issues, often of considerable complexity -- and moral insight, to my mind, is the highest goal of fiction.Grenville's novel about the early settlement of New South Wales works perfectly on all these fronts. It told me a great deal that I did not know, especially the way in which convicts theoretically transported for life might apply for a ticket-of-leave after only a year and a full pardon a few years later, enabling them to claim land and become part of a workforce with strong incentives to develop the country in which they now found themselves. I gather that books such as  THE FATAL SHORE  by Robert Hughes and  A COMMONWEALTH OF THIEVES  by Thomas Keneally do this in greater detail, but Grenville made it seem personal, since she had already got me to invest in the life of her chief character and to experience things through his eyes.William Thornhill, who is apparently based on one of Grenville's own ancestors, grows up as a boy in pre-Dickensian London at the end of the 18th century. It is a hard time, when most poor folk must resort to petty thievery in order to make ends meet. But Will is lucky; he is taken on as an apprentice waterman by the father of his childhood sweetheart Sal. Through years of hard work, he is eventually able to set up on his own, marry Sal, and start a family. All seems to be going well until his wiped out by a series of financial disasters, forcing him back into stealing to support his family. Inevitably he is caught, and is lucky to escape hanging. He is transported to Australia, and Sal and their son go with him.Will is an interesting hero, strong and resourceful, devoted to his growing family, yet not above taking short cuts in order to protect them. Sal turns out to have strengths too, and though she does not embrace the pioneer life to the extent that her husband does, she constantly surprises Will by her practicality, understanding, and common sense. Within five years, Will has claimed some land on the banks of the almost-inaccessible Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, planting seed corn and building a shack for his family. It is almost a Robinson Crusoe existence, but the reader knows that between them Will and Sal have the determination to make it work.All this is prelude, roughly the first half of the book. Almost imperceptibly (for Grenville is a gracious and subtle writer) the main theme of the book becomes apparent, although it had been announced in the book's dedication "to the Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present, and future." For this land being claimed by Will and others is not uninhabited, merely not settled in the European way. Inevitably, the colonists are going to come up against the original inhabitants, and because Grenville is so steady in her build-up, the reader has plenty of time to consider all possible responses. Grenville illustrates these within the small group of other settlers on the river, ranging from Will's former mentor Blackwood who tells him "A man got to pay a fair price... Matter of give a little, take a little," to Smasher Sullivan, who handles matters with dogs, whip, and gun. Grenville also shows the range of possibilities within Will's own family, from his belligerent elder son Willie to the quiet Dick, who feels the same connection to the land that the aborigines do, and would sneak off as a child to play naked with their children.But the tragedy is that, when it comes down to it, few of these possibilities are possible at all. Ultimately it is the will of the community that prevails, and even fundamentally moral people such as William Thornhill may find themselves drawn into actions they consider repugnant in order to protect something yet more valuable: a wife, a family, and a land that he has grown to love.

I persevered until I got to 50% and then decided to give up. This is a very descriptive book - but the plot could have been so much more exciting. I couldn't really feel any sympathy for the characters as we don't really find out much about them.The topic should have led to a very good book - the author has researched well but was at times unfocussed. I would have loved to have read how eventful their boat journey from London to Australia was - but there was nothing about this - the story just jumped continents.You get a sense of how folk lived at that time - but just far too much detail and not enough plot. Maybe I gave up too soon - who knows - but there are other books that I need to get on and enjoy.Don't let this put you off - you may well like the detailed descriptions - other reviewers seem to have enjoyed it.

This story have insight in to a past we aren't fully aware of. It talked of poverty, struggle, horrors of a new beginning in an unknown land. The Thornhill's lives told in vivid forms making the reader feel they were seeing the community come together and splinter.This was a fantastic history lesson warts and all about the colonies in the new land, Australia.

This is an excellent story of what life could be like for those unfortunate enough to be transported to Australia, often for only a minor crime. The voyage itself could be arduous and the author gives us a quirky cast of travel companions. If you like reading about the triumph of love and determination and you enjoy history, I recommend this book for you.

Having seen the live show I just had to buy this book about the Secret River. I truly was moved by the live show. Totally gripped by the book. Kate Grenville is an amazing writer, I can not wait to read more of her books. Well worth reading i would recommend it to others to read, once I started reading it I couldn't stop. Well done Late Grenville

I've read some of the other reviews here and absolutely agree with them.It took a while to get going (indeed, my mate got half way through and gave up). That said, the earlier part is interesting, but just a little slow. However, it really grabbed me as I had to start making decisions with Thornhill about what was the right thing to do.The author balanced the argument very well - it was never black and white, if you'll excuse the pun. On the one hand, the settlers like Thornhill didn't want conflict with the natives, they'd worked hard and sacrificed much to gain the pitifully small amount they had, they were fighting against the odds to survive in an environment they just didn't understand and were so ill equipped for; so you feel enormous sympathy for them when the natives steal their crops. However, the author never lets you forget that the land belongs to the natives, they are indeed a part of it as much as the trees, the rocks and he soil are a part of it. It's their land that has been stolen from them."You give a little, you take a little." Blackwood's advice is so pertinent to us all in this global world. We must try to live in harmony with other people, even if they're different from us and we don't really understand. Had Thornhill sectioned off a piece of his land for the natives, shown them how to cultivate it to grow plentiful supplies of their daisy roots, maybe they'd have shown him how to kill a kangaroo and before they'd known it, they'd have been living side by side, each becoming more successful in their turn.One other thing worth a mention - the author creates an incredibly vivid sense of place. You can feel and smell it. You understand how Thornhill becomes so strongly emotionally connected to it. It's just just that it's the first thing in his life he's ever been able to call his own; it's the magnificent beauty of the place. But not just beautiful - so potentially dangerous and so incredibly difficult for man to tame.A thought-provoking book. Worth a read.