Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville

JUDGES' COMMENTS

They called us the Colony of New South Wales … We wasn’t new anything. We was ourselves.

With these words, Kate Grenville establishes the presence of Sarah Thornhill, youngest child of William Thornhill, the convict-made-good of The Secret River. With warmth and grace Grenville leads us through Sarah's fierce, forbidden love affair with Jack Langland, into an unexpectedly tender marriage to the older John Daunt. On the fringes of Sarah's story the wider story of colonial Australia plays out — a niece is forcibly taken from her Maori family, a lost brother chooses an alternate life downriver, and Sarah discovers her father's part in the massacre of the local incumbent landowners, creating a scar that is ‘never mended’.

In Sarah Thornhill Grenville has created a vivid cast of characters who must choose how they live with the actions of an earlier generation. Beautifully evoking the lush landscape of the Hawkesbury, Grenville works her themes of reconciliation and moral debt with delicate skill. Singing with energy, rich with character insight, Sarah Thornhill is an important work from one of Australia's most significant writers.