'Until recently, I had not read Reaching Tin River, though I had admired several other novels by Thea Astley. If I had investigated its premise beforehand – a woman becomes obsessed with a long-dead man she glimpses in an archival photograph of early settlers – I am not certain I would have chosen to read it. Frankly, I’ve had my fill of novels about dead white men, of novels that romanticise our colonial past. And yet I should have known that I would be safe in Astley’s hands.' (Introduction)
