Sarah Thornhill

By Kate Grenville

When The Secret River, a novel about frontier violence in early Australia, appeared in 2005, it became an immediate bestseller—but it also caused controversy for its unflinching look at Australia’s history. It has since been published all over the world and translated into twenty languages. The follow-up novel, The Lieutenant, continued Grenville’s exploration of the story of first settlement and once again caused controversy in her homeland. Now Sarah Thornhill brings the trilogy to an emotionally explosive conclusion.

Sarah is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, the pioneer at the centre of The Secret River. Unknown to her, her father—an illiterate ex-convict from London—has built his fortune on the blood of Aboriginal people. With a fine stone house and plenty of money, Thornhill is a man who’s reinvented himself. As he tells his daughter, he “never looks back,” and Sarah grows up learning not to ask about the past. Instead, her eyes are on handsome Jack Langland, whom she’s loved since she was a child. Their romance seems idyllic, destined, but the ugly secret in Sarah’s family is poised to ambush both of them.

With Sarah Thornhill, Grenville uses family history to tell a story about the past that’s also about the present and its dilemmas. Driven by the captivating voice of the illiterate Sarah—at once headstrong, sympathetic, curious and refreshingly honest—this is an unforgettable portrait of a strong and passionate woman caught up in a historical moment that has left an indelible mark on the present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781443410359

Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville is a prize-winning fiction writer whose novels include Lilian's Story, Dark Places and the Orange Prize award winning novel The Idea of Perfection. She lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter.

Reviews for Sarah Thornhill

[siri51 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

good to revisit the sometimes troubled Thornhill family in this sequel. Sarah is a strong and determined character - this is all about her point of view; her doomed relationship with Jack and her discovery of the father's sins.

[sianpr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Engrossing story in which Kate Grenville lays bare the secrets and lies of the settlers in Australia and confronts racism. Loved the character of John Daunt - such a gentle and caring soul.

[lahochstetler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Growing up in rural Australia, Sarah Thornhill, daughter of a transported convict, pursues her childhood sweetheart Jack. But Jack's mother was a native Australian, he has "black" blood. While this makes no difference to Sarah, it does to the rest of her family. Different cultures and family secrets try their relationship. Sarah fights for a future with Jack when all the forces of her family and community are against it.The best thing about this book is undeniably the setting. The Thornhills live in mid-nineteenth century rural Australia. It is stark and unforgiving territory. White Australians have all of the anxieties and concerns of a colonial population. Native Australians are reeling from the brutalities of white colonists. It is a fascinating world, and one that Grenville portrays beautifully. That said, this book was too much of a standard romance novel to really speak to me. There are some fascinating themes, but they revolve to heavily around Sarah and Jack's relationship. I would have like a broader focus.The most important takeaway? Grenville reminds readers that we have a collective responsibility for the past, one that a new generation cannot simply erase.

[amme_mr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

By the same author as "The Secret River" which is a book I have previously read and reviewed. I enjoyed this book more than the previous one. The plot was interesting, although the writing is difficult to read as the author has chosen not to use inverted commas which always slows a book down in my opinion.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sarah Thornhill is the third novel in a trilogy. The first, The Secret River, was wonderful. The second, the Lieutenant, was fine -- but completely unrelated (other than in time and place) to the first. And now the third is a disappointment. It is basically a romance, with none of the complexity of the first novel. Kate Grenville's strong writing raises the book from "chick lit", but I would have been just as happy had I stopped after the first novel. Maybe happier.

[lesleynicol · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a sequel to Secret River which I really enjoyed, It was a great story of early life on the Hawkesbury River NSW and gave the two sides of the story from the settlers on one side and the natives on the other. However this story is really nothing more than a romance ; all it does is tell us "what happened next" and was really an unnecessary read as far as I was concerned.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Third in a series based on the Thornhill family's settlement in Australlia, Sarah Thornhill is the definitely weakest installment. While it was a fast and fairly engaging read, I kept thinking to myself that I had read it all before. Grenville traces again the tricky relations between the white settlers and the black native inhabitants. At times, the blacks (and half-blacks) seem to be accepted--up to a point; at other times, prejudice is rampant. Sarah's Pa, who was "sent out" (meaning he was sent to Australia as punishment for crimes committed in England), has made his way up in the world, accumulating money, land, and a bit of class, including a second wife with pretentions of joining the hoi polloi. The first half of the novel centers around Sarah's growing love for Jack Langland, a half-black young man who seems to be accepted into the family circle. The two have pledged to marry, but when they make this known, Pa and Ma Thornhill make clear where the social and racial lines are to be drawn. As things start to fall apart, family secrets start seeping through the cracks--secrets that tear apart not only Sarah and Jack but the entire Thornhill family.On the plus side, Grenville draws a sharp portrait of the hardships of life on a new settlement as she focuses on Sarah's newly married life with Irishman John Daunt. What she has to say about black-white relations, while painful, is fairly conventional and has been handled more deftly in other works.I have to agree with the reviewer who complained about the substitution of the word "of" for "have" (or, more accurately, the contraction 've) throughout. Maybe the reason it bothered me so much is that, as an English professor, it's one of the perennial errors in student papers that really grates on my nerves. Ex: "They must of took her to the cemetary, I said." It's true that Sarah is illiterate; but then she's telling her story, not writing it down, so why not use the common contraction? By the time I got to the end of the book, I found myself starting to count "ofs" with my teeth set on edge. If it hadn't been for this, I probably would have upped my rating by at least half a star.

[ros0peters · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Historical history is a fav and I know little about this time and place, so am learning a lot. Good writing helps.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The white colonists have pushed the original Aborigines to the fringes of society, poor and begging for food and clothing. We first meet Sarah Thornhill as a young girl, her father an ex-convict turned colonist and landowner and the amazing thing about this novel is that the words and what she feels is that of a young girl. As a teenager, the dialog and observations mature somewhat, and she falls in love with her brothers friend and seal hunting partner, but a boy who her stepmother does not consider suitable. There are secrets in her family, that as the youngest she does not know, another brother she never knew, and her and Jack are torn apart. She marries a Mr. Daunt, has a child, and learns to love the kindness of her new husband and matures. So does the prose, which becomes lush and descriptive, beautiful descriptions of the vegetation and the scenery that is the Australian outback. She finally learns the horrific secrets her family had been harboring and struggles to overcome the guilt this knowledge brings. This is an exploration of a young girl turning into a women as well as the part the white colonists had in marginalizing the original Aborigines and their culture. I found it to be profound, but wonderful as well.

[kiwifortyniner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is the sequel to The secret river although it can be read as a stand alone book. It tells the story of Sarah Thornhill, the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, whose mother died when she was born. Sarah has an older brother William and he spends much time whaling with Jack Langland who is of mixed aboriginal/white descent. The family tolerate their friendship but when after a time they come to love each other and want to get married a secret is revealed to Jack and he leaves in anger without speaking to Sarah and flees to New Zealand. Later Sarah marries an Irish farmer who in time she comes to love.The book did for me paint a good picture of what life would have been like for the illiterate Sarah, living on the land as a farmers wife. it dealt with the racial and class tensions of the time, and showed how actions committed by her parents generation could surface and have to be dealt with, and affect Sarah's life. It also brought in a situation similar to the stolen generation of later times. I liked the book in that it made me think about the issues of the time and what living then would be like for someon such as Sarah but I did not like it nearly as much as the Secret River which seemed to have a lot more detail in the story.

[vietnambutterfly · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This sequel to The Secret river unforunately lacks the punch of the forerunner. Reading The secret river allowed me to have a sense of life in England and later Australia with tantelising realism but that was lost in Sarah Thornhill. Sarah is the daughter of Mr Thornhill the main character of The secret river. She is somewhat fiesty choosing initially to flout convention in not riding side saddle and having a liasion with handsom Jack Langland the son of an aboriginal woman. The prejudices and secrets of early Australian history come to bringa pale over Sarah. Eventually she marries and has a daughter settling with a farmer from ireland and a respectful relationship is formed which grows overtime. Some resolution of past wrongs is forged with a trip to new Zealand where a grudging respect for the Maroi women is formed. A rather lackluster novel when compared tot he soaring The secret river.

[cushlareads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the sequel to Kate Grenville's excellent The Secret River, but I don't think it matters if you read this one first. I had totally forgotten what happened in The Secret River, which is pertty dopy because at the time I loved it and immediately added Kate Grenville to my favourite authors list on here. Not remembering did not detract from the book at all, and if anything made it slightly better because there was clearly a Dark Secret From The Past.Sarah Thornhill is the youngest of 5 children in the Thornhill family. Her father, William, and her mother Meg were English convicts who were sent to Australia. William is now well-off, remarried to a very unlikable woman, and doing a pretty good job at being upright and respectable. Sarah talks about the "taint" of being an ex-convict though, which is still there. Grenville does a great job again at making you feel like you are back in Australia 200 years ago, up the Hawkesbury River. Sarah grows up and falls in love with Jack Langland, from one of the other farming families in their community. Jack's mother was an Aborigine woman but he's been brought up in the Langland family as one of them, but only up to a point. Jack's best friend is Will, Sarah's oldest brother, and they work on the sealing boats that go to New Zealand. There's a strong New Zealand strand to the story (but I don't want to give away the plot).As you'd expect in a book set in early Australia the main themes are race and class and the different attitudes of the immigrants to the Aborigines. Mostly though this reads like a straightforward good story of Sarah and how she falls in love with a boy who's not good enough for her parents. I really enjoyed it, but it didn't blow me away like the Secret River did at the time.

[jody_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Born on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, Sarah is the youngest of William and Sarah Thornhill, the hardy colonists we met in Grenville's The Secret River. This new generation of Australians know nothing of their parents origins and begin a new chapter in Australia's history. Growing up strong (in mind and body) and healthy, Sarah lives the life of many a fictious heroine ... beautiful, slightly wild, rebellious and of course, loved by all, especially Jack, the half-cast son of a river neighbour. Family secrets are hard to keep on the river though, and it is only a matter of time before the two young lovers are torn apart by the deeds of the generation before.I began Sarah Thornhill knowing it would not pack the punch of Secret River, so I will not wax on about the sentimentality and romantising of this sequel. Suffice to say that it ties everything up in a nice little buddle without detailing the horrendous realities of the time. It touches on these acpects, but will not upset sensitive readers. The stolen generation theme makes a disguised appearance (although this story takes place long before that became policy), which I commend Grenville for. She has a keen, clear eye for indigenous history and never quakes at attempting to correct history books. But I do get the feeling Sara Thornhill was written more for the publishers than for herself. The pressure for a sequel can be strong, I'm sure, and I do believe many of her readers will devouring this book with relish.As for me, I read it in a day and found it wanting in the company of Secret River.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Multiple award-winning author Kate Grenville completes her acclaimed early-Australia trilogy with "Sarah Thornhill." This is the story of the eponymous heroine and it wraps up the overarching narrative of Will Thornhill’s family – Will who was transported to Australia as a convict in 1806 – and it contains a highly satisfying, balanced, and beautiful denouement for all that went before. As the life of a strong-willed woman, "Sarah Thornhill" contains some vivid and pitch-perfect scenes throughout. She is thwarted in love early on, and the author sets these scenes in an appropriately high melodrama. The tone subtly and gradually calms for Sarah, as she agrees to marry landowner John Daunt a few years later, and settle at his station to her lot of toil and family-raising. But Ms. Grenville’s theme of the treatment and mistreatment of Aborigines drives this trilogy, and reaches if not a full atonement, then at least Sarah’s contrite and climactic offering on a far-off New Zealand shore during a ceremony honoring a dead Maori girl. Sarah’s odyssey and expiation exhaust her, and Ms. Grenville’s treatment of the climax here deserves every honor and accolade. Her character doesn’t really do enough – she will never fully forgive herself for her unwitting participation in slaughter – but she does everything she can. She empties herself of her story, weeps openly before the village’s women for its fatal history. The native women understand and accept her offering and her tears, and the emotionally drained heroine goes back to the shore in the nighttime. Here she once again reflects on the grand universe, in which she knows she and her family are as nothing, mattering not at all. In truth, not enough can ever be done about humanity’s rapacious nature and the conclusion of this book treats this truth with respect and rectitude. There is no neat wrapping-up and cleansing-of-hands here. The author is too wise and compassionate for that."Sarah Thornhill" concludes this trilogy in the only way that seems possible. The Europeans who plunder and occupy Australia are wise enough in Sarah’s case to understand the enormity of their sin, and must live with the dark knowledge. Read this trilogy for its comprehensive and highly artful treatment of this chapter in history. It is outstanding.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville is a direct sequel to her novel Secret River as well as the third book in her Colonial Trilogy. Sarah is the last child born to William Thornhill, her mother is dead and her father has remarried a social climbing woman who overlooks her husbands convict past and his other secrets. Sarah grows up and falls in love with Jack Langland, knowing full well that he is part white, part “darkie”. Jack has always been welcomed in her home and she doesn’t think her father will object to the match. She is even more confident when her father brings his half dark granddaughter into the family.But the granddaughter is being forced to give up her “native ways”, she is given the name of Rachel and being taught to do things the English way. Then comes a day when instead of accepting her choice, her parents tear them apart. Jack is told of the massacre of aboriginals that William was a large part of and this turns him against the family and he wants nothing to do with Sarah. She eventually marries another man, one who is kind and caring, but still her thoughts are with Jack. On her father’s deathbed, she finally learns of his secret and she has a very hard time coming to terms with it. Eventually Jack comes back into her life with a request that she come to New Zealand to allow her native family come to terms with the death of William’s half native granddaughter. Will this step allow Sarah to find closure and allow her to move on or will this end in her being alone. Sarah Thornhill, as in all of the books in this trilogy, explores the difficult relationship between the white settlers and the native population. I found this beautifully written story to be a very moving portrait of a young woman of colonial Australia. Never knowing of the atrocities committed by her father, she didn’t realize that bringing his half-breed granddaughter into the family had more to do with atonement than in actually caring for the girl. The author loosely based some of the facts of this story on her own family’s history, and one can see how certain events and choices made in the past will resonate in the future.

[litfan_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the third in a trilogy; I had not read the first two books, but found that this novel works as a standalone. Sufficient history is referenced throughout the novel to give the reader appropriate context for Sarah’s life, even without having read the initial novels. Reading this one, however, did make me want to go back and read the other two. Sarah is the daughter of William Thornhill, a colonist and former prisoner in New South Wales who has made his way up in the world and has a comfortable house on the river. Sarah is somewhat toyboyish and quite feisty, and her voice rings true and likeable as the narrator of the story. As Sarah ages, her childish affection for her older brother’s friend, Jack Langland, grows to love. Jack’s father is a colonist, his mother a native; Sarah is unconcerned with Jack’s race, but dismayed to find how deeply it matters to her family, and finds herself stunned at the hatred spurred by skin color. Jack and Sarah’s love blooms against a backdrop of dark family secrets. While romance plays an important role in the novel, it reads more like historical fiction. It shines light on the colonization of Australia, and the whites’ treatment of the native people, through Sarah’s eyes as she learns the secrets of her own family. Sarah’s shattered sense of her family and her own place in the world, as the truth comes to light, is touching and hauntingly authentic. A fast-moving story, that engages the reader in the lives of the characters and offers a strong sense of setting, this is an enjoyable read.

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sarah Thornhill, the youngest daughter of a wealthy yet provincial British ex-convict, grows up in 19th-century Australia learning not to ask questions about her family’s past. When Sarah falls in love with a local man whose mother was Aboriginal, her chance at happiness is shattered by the racial and class prejudice churning within her family and Australia’s burgeoning white society. Although Sarah eventually finds a new path for her life, she continues to feel haunted by her youthful love affair, somehow knowing that understanding it will provide a key to her past. When she finally uncovers the truth about her country’s tragic history and her father’s brutal past, she is determined to make amends with those affected by his actions. Summary BPLThird and final installment of the Thornhill family saga. This one is my favourite. Pragmatic, uneducated Sarah tells her story in her own voice, rich in texture and content. Wonderfully human characters.8 out of 10 For fans of Australian historical fiction.