'Martin Sparrow is already struggling when the Hawkesbury’s great flood of March 1806 lays waste to him and his farm.
'Luckless, lovelorn and deep in debt, the ex-convict is confronted with a choice. He can buckle down and set about his agricultural recovery, or he can heed the whispers of an earthly paradise on the far side of the mountains – a place where men are truly free – and strike out for a new life. But what chance of renewal is there for a man like Sparrow in either the brutal colony or the forbidding wilderness?
'The decision he makes triggers a harrowing chain of events and draws in a cast of extraordinary characters, including Alister Mackie, the chief constable on the river; his deputy, Thaddeus Cuff; the vicious hunter, Griffin Pinney; the Romany girl, Bea Faa; and the young Aboriginal men, Caleb and Moowut’tin, caught between war and peace.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Epigraph: Colonies are built on dreams, but some dreams threaten ruin.
'Since the publication of my novel The Making of Martin Sparrow in 2018 I have often been asked the question ‘What made you turn to fiction?’ This has turned out, usually, to be a question with a sub-text: ‘What made you, a long-time historian, cross over to the other side?’ But whatever form the question takes, my answer is always the same: ‘That’s easy,’ I say, ‘you get to make things up.’' (Introduction)
'Just one thing can shape your whole life’ is one line in a novel of four hundred and fifty pages, but it is telling in its application toward the characters of this brilliant début novel. Set on the Hawkesbury River in 1806, the cast of characters is large and yet we find each of them living with the consequences of an earlier choice or misdemeanour that ripples beyond the singular life and into the nascent river community.' (Introduction)
'Just one thing can shape your whole life’ is one line in a novel of four hundred and fifty pages, but it is telling in its application toward the characters of this brilliant début novel. Set on the Hawkesbury River in 1806, the cast of characters is large and yet we find each of them living with the consequences of an earlier choice or misdemeanour that ripples beyond the singular life and into the nascent river community.' (Introduction)
'Since the publication of my novel The Making of Martin Sparrow in 2018 I have often been asked the question ‘What made you turn to fiction?’ This has turned out, usually, to be a question with a sub-text: ‘What made you, a long-time historian, cross over to the other side?’ But whatever form the question takes, my answer is always the same: ‘That’s easy,’ I say, ‘you get to make things up.’' (Introduction)
