This was my second attempt to read "The Secret River", the first book I've read for these book clubs. I loved Kate Grenville's "The Idea of Perfection", but I think I have studied too much Australian history, and "The Secret River" was just too bleak for me.
For readers who would like to read more fiction set in 19th century Australia, I would highly recommend the trilogy "The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" by Henry Handel Richardson. Like Grenville, the author (actually a woman, writing under a pseudonym in the early 20th century) based the story on her own family history. Richardson's father was a doctor who came to Victoria during the gold rush of the 1850s.
"The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" is available in the MobileRead library.
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