Sarah Thornhill
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Orange Prize–Winning author of The Secret River delivers “brilliant fiction and illuminating personal history” in the finale of her Australian trilogy (The Independent).
With The Secret River, Kate Grenville dug into her own family’s history to create an unflinching tale of frontier violence in early Australia. She continued her bold exploration of Australia’s beginnings in The Lieutenant. Now Sarah Thornhill brings this acclaimed trilogy to an emotionally explosive conclusion.
Sarah is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, an ex-convict from London. Unknown to Sarah, her father has built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill has reinvented himself, teaching his daughter to never look back or ask about the past. Instead, Sarah fixes her eyes on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems idyllic, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush them both.
Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarah—at once headstrong, sympathetic, curious, and refreshingly honest—this is an unforgettable portrait of a passionate woman caught up in a historical moment that’s left an indelible mark on the present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The final novel in Grenville's trilogy about the British colonization of New South Wales continues her exploration of the savagery with which emancipated convict settlers ousted the indigenous peoples. The novel, which can be read as a stand-alone, is told from the point-of-view of Sarah, the youngest child of William Thornhill, the conflicted protagonist in The Secret River. From early childhood, Sarah senses her father's troubles, and eventually discovers their terrible source. Her disillusionment will highlight the novel's central question: is it possible to both thrive as an individual and sufficiently atone for the sins of one's ancestors? Sarah's affair with her brother's closest friend, whose mother was an Aborigine, is squashed by Sarah's wicked stepmother, more clich than character. Sarah then marries an English Protestant from Ireland, whose background Grenville exploits nicely: usurpers can be found on any continent. Lyrical passages light up the narrative, and Grenville's profound themes make it tempting to ignore the novel's flaws. Sarah lacks the complexity and credibility of protagonists in the earlier novels, and Grenville postpones the reveal of the family's secrets for too long, perplexingly, as they were already revealed in The Secret River.
