Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most popular and best-known writers. Her novel The Secret River won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was short-listed for the Man Booker, the Miles Franklin and the IMPAC Awards. She was, however, already no stranger to international acclaim; her earlier novel, The Idea of Perfection, won The Orange Prize in 2001.

Ms Grenville is also no stranger to contention. She has now written three novels set in the early days of White settlement, The Secret River, the Lieutenant and, most recently, Sarah Thornhill. The strength of her imaginings have drawn ire from historians who want their history straight up, without the privilege of fictional narrative.

Sarah Thornhill is a sequel to the first of these three novels. It picks up the story of William Thornhill’s daughter who grows up knowing nothing of the dark secret in her family’s past. When she has to confront it both the direction of her life and her thinking is changed. It’s a story about secrets and lies, but also about reparation, about making good. Grenville has said that although the book is set in the nineteenth century, it is as much about the ugly secrets in Australian history that her own generation inherited.

These books form a loose trilogy about the first generations of white settlement in Australia, and what that shared black/white history means for contemporary Australians.

Kate Grenville has come to Queensland as a guest of Noosa Long Weekend and Outspoken.