A River Town

"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 finds that the price of goodness can be painfully high. Thomas Keneally has created one of the most wonderfully realized characters in modern fiction, forced to confront questions of duty and desire, race and sex, class and caste, politics and religion, in a town that becomes a vividly moving microcosm of humanity’s strengths and weaknesses, tragedies and triumphs. A River Town is engrossing, funny, and touching – vintage Keneally."