The Orange Prize–winning author Kate Grenville recalls her family’s history in an astounding novel about the pioneers of New South Wales. Already a best seller in Australia, The Secret River is the story of Grenville’s ancestors, who wrested a new life from the alien terrain of Australia and its native people. William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, is deported to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia in 1806. In this new world of convicts and charlatans, Thornhill tries to pull his family into a position of power and comfort. When he rounds a bend in the Hawkesbury River and sees a gentle slope of land, he becomes determined to make the place his own. But, as uninhabited as the island appears, Australia is full of native people, and they do not take kindly to Thornhill’s theft of their home. The Secret River is the tale of Thornhill’s deep love for his small corner of the new world, and his slow realization that if he wants to settle there, he must ally himself with the most despicable of the white settlers, and to keep his family safe, he must permit terrifying cruelty to come to innocent people.

凱特·格倫維爾（1950— ）　國際知名的澳大利亞女作傢，獲得過悉尼大學和美國科羅拉多大學的學位，曾分彆在歐洲和美國工作和學習過七年。做過電影編輯、記者、打字員和教師。已有六部小說問世並獲多種文學奬項，其中《完美的想法》獲2001年英國橘子奬，《麗蓮的故事》（已被拍成電影）、《黑暗之地》、《瓊創造瞭曆史》等深受評論傢和讀者喜愛。《神秘的河流》是她迄今在國際上最有影響的代錶作。

格倫維爾擅長在自己創作的曆史小說中探討澳大利亞在殖民時期和當代的階級、種族和性彆問題。