A River Town

by Thomas Keneally

Book Overview

By the author of Schlinder's List and Woman of the Inner Sea The time is the start of the century. The place is a seemingly peaceful Australian town on the banks of the Macleay River in New South Wales. Here Tim Shea has come from distant Ireland to build a new life free of the crippling poverty and bleak horizons of the past. But he finds that this land of opportunity is a land of perilous choices. As a good man in a less than perfect world, he also...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452276551
• ISBN13: 9780452276550
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

my favorite book

I have never written an online review, but I am on somewhat of a crusade to get people to read this book. So many dramatic things happen; a fatal accident, a near drowning, an epidemic, and the sheriff's ongoing quest to find out the identity of the woman who died in a botched abortion whose preserved head is kept in a jar, but the overall feeling in the book is that we are reading the story of simple, decent people.

wonderful

Any work by Thomas Keneally is a treasure trove of human emotion and character in the most diverse of locations. He has written no 2 books alike= from tackling the civil war in "Conferedates", to the Booker-prize winning "Schindler's List" (he is the uncredited author and discoverer of this amazing tale, though America tends to credit Steven Spielberg erroneously), to modern drama in "Woman of the Inner Sea"... pick up any of his works and you are in for a rare treat. "A River Town" is his most personal work, based upon his grandfather's life, and a moving portrait of life at the turn of the century in s young bush town in Australia. It is similarly an immigrant's tale, and most of all, the tale of a good man. Beautifully written, this is a wonderful summer book.I am always surprised that Keneally doesn't get the recognition he so greatly deserves- this is one of the truly great authors of the 20th and 21st century.

turn of the century Australian frontier classic

Keneally is such an engaging writer that you quickly get caught up in the human drama of the Australian frontier with flawed people and hardships, much less the ethnic conflicts between Whites and Asians, and class conflicts among the class conscious English immigrants. Not a very satisfying ending makes me think this is probably based on a true story. A grand story by a great story teller, with human drama and difficult choices.