Searching for the Secret River

Searching for the Secret River is the extraordinary story of how Kate Grenville came to write her award-winning novel, The Secret River.


It all began with her ancestor Solomon Wiseman-transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life-who later became a wealthy man and built his colonial mansion on the Hawkesbury. Increasingly obsessed with his story, Grenville pursued him from Sydney to London and back, and then up the Hawkesbury itself. Slowly she began to realise she must write about him.


Grenville tells us about how this novel was formed, the research she did, the false starts she made and the frustrations she experienced. Searching for the Secret River is a great book about the writing of a great novel.


'It is education in the art, and craft, of fiction, a lesson in the arduous devotion it can command. Yet it is much more than a quite unbelievably generous “invitation into her writing room”. It is a courageous public scrutiny of her motives.' Weekend Australian