Promotional Information

For the first time since her bestseller The Thorn Birds captivated millions of readers, Colleen McCullough returns to Australia with a breathtaking new historical saga.

Reviews

Richard Morgan has a fine life in mid-18th-century Bristol, England. He's a skilled gunsmith and a devoted family man. In his late 20s, his life falls apart; his wife and two adored children die over a short space of time, and he is framed for a crime he did not commit. After several years in the worst imaginable prisons, he is one of a large number of convicts put on a slave ship for the month's long voyage to Australia. He survives the brutish treatment with unbelievable equanimity and finds a new life in Botany Bay. Although Morgan's demeanor is so sunny as to be Pollyanna-ish, the history and drama woven through his life story are very absorbing. McCullough has a great sense of place and time when writing about Australia and its colorful past. Reader Tim Curry captures the voices eloquently. Recommended for libraries with historical fiction fans. Barbara Valle, El Paso P.L., TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

HMcCullough's narrative skills are fully displayed in this intricately researched, passionate epic of 18th-century England's colonization of Australia, in which an upright Bristol tavernkeeper, Richard Morgan, becomes one of the first British convicts to be sent to the rugged new prison colony of Botany Bay. It is not enough that Morgan is struggling with grief, having lost his wife and two children in three separate tragedies. He discovers that his employer is scamming the government of excise taxes, but when he reports the fraud, he becomes the target of the distiller's revenge. Framed for robbery and extortion, he is arrested and thrown into prisonDa hellish pit of overcrowding, disease and filthDthen convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation on the infamous slaver ships bound for Australia; the success of the American Revolution has closed the New World to England's unwanted population. During the horrific sea journey, Morgan becomes a leader among the men, protecting handsome Fourth Mate Stephen Donovan (called a Miss Molly by the crew), and forging a friendship that will last a lifetime. Once in Port Jackson (later Sydney), Morgan becomes indispensable as a skilled worker and master gunsmith. He is soon moved to spectacular Norfolk Island, where there is fertile soil, food aplenty and happiness in love. Summoning the intimate acquaintance with her native Australian landscape familiar to readers of The Thorn Birds, and the mastery of meticulous detail that distinguishes her series on Roman history (Caesar, etc.), McCullough blends local color, extraordinary characters, ethnic tensions (between Irish, Scots, Welsh and Englishmen), grand descriptive passages and even seamen's thick dialects into a complex, consistently entertaining narrative. The strength and resilience of her unforgettable hero makes this animated tale one of McCullough's best to date. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.