For Australia, I picked The Secret River by Kate Grenville, a novel that starts in London in 1806 with a man who is about to make a mistake that will send his family into exile in New South Wales. This was an excellent pick for my Read Around the World quest.

(Quick side bar: I’ve read most of Liane Moriarty’s works (she is one of my favorite authors) and I’ve also read The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough. These would also make great choices for anyone reading around the world. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!)

This was a captivating novel. I truly felt like I was transported to the early 1800s and could really imagine what a British settlement in Australia was like. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the conversations, the outfits–this book is my new benchmark for historical fiction.

Grenville dedicated this novel to “the Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present and future” and she deftly showed the tensions between the people who had inhabited Australia for 65,000 years and the new arrivals from England. I found myself rooting for both sides, then wondering why I had to root for anyone at all, then wondering how we reconcile ideas of “civilized” settlements with nomadic peoples.

This book made me think.

A LOT.

The Secret River made me think about the power and allure of land and whether any person can ever truly own it. But if land can be owned, and it is stolen, what do the descendants do? What way of life is right? Aren’t they all?

I kept thinking about The Little House on the Prairie books which I read and reread as a child, and I questioned the expansion of the United States. I own a house in Pasadena, California. But is my house built on land stolen from other people? What does that mean for me? For my country?

And it’s more than just ownership of land. What is a country? Why do we have countries? Is humanity moving toward something greater that we can’t even imagine in 2024?

The Secret River was so much more than a work of beautifully written historical fiction. It was a story that opened my mind to a lot of uncomfortable questions.