Description

Refigures the historical novel…Salt Creek introduces a capacious new talent.–The Weekend AustralianHester Finch recalls her family’s move to coastal South Australia in 1855. The connections the Finches form with passing travellers and with a local Aboriginal boy, Tully, whom Hester’s father seeks to educate almost as his own son, will for ever alter their fates, testing their loyalty to each other and to their own principles.

Publisher Review

Salt Creek is a love song to a lost world... the precision of Treloar's poetry stops the heart.' The Guardian 'This is another brilliant and absorbing addition to the recent crop of exceptionally fine historical novels exploring the Australian pioneer experience and is very highly recommended.' Historical Novels Review Magazine 'Salt Creek is a raw and convincing addition to the canon. Treloar writes with beauty and a winning compassion.' The Times, Book of the Month 'Empathetic and beautifully written, the story drives deep into the pioneering experience with the confidence of a writer perfectly at ease with her subject.' Daily Mail '[An] impressive debut... a haunting story.' The Sunday Times 'Brilliant and engaging, Salt Creek is first-rate historical fiction.' Foreword Review 'A historical novel in its grittiest, most real form' Good Housekeeping 'This engrossing novel is rich in character and local colour.' Woman and Home 'Salt Creek is an intense personal story, a very human story and a great read.' New Books Magazine 'Hester Finch is a wonderful character - the brave heart of this haunting, absorbing story' Kirsty Wark 'Salt Creek is a novel alive with character, history and poetry, leading us with careful understatement into the unfamiliar world of the Coorong region of Southern Australia.' Walter Scott Prize Jury 'Evocative and beautifully written debut novel, set in 19th century Australia. Rich with landscape and stifling heat, it is absorbing and thought-provoking.' The Bookbag 'Salt Creek is historical fiction at its best, ferrying us to distant shores that seem curiously relevant to our own' Toast Magazine [Ink@84] 'Refigures the historical novel ... Salt Creek introduces a capacious new talent' The Australian 'Written with a profound respect for history: with an understanding that beyond a certain point, the past and its people are unknowable.' Sydney Morning Herald '[A] deeply moving story about love and rejection as much as it is about the impact of European settlement and the destruction of Indigenous culture.' Sunday Age 'A haunting story, beautifully written and quietly subversive. It's a spectacular debut.' ANZ Lit Lovers 'Salt Creek is a novel alive with character, history and poetry, leading us with careful understatement into the unfamiliar world of the Coorong region of Southern Australia.' The judges of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 'Evocative prose and a flair for drama drew us into this historical novel ... an affecting portrait of a family in dire straits - and a hard-hitting story about the characters' troubled relationships with their indigenous neighbours.'iTunes 'Brilliant ... Refigures the historical novel ... Salt Creek introduces a capacious new talent' The Weekend Australian 'Written with a profound respect for history: with an understanding that beyond a certain point, the past and its people are unknowable.' Sydney Morning Herald '[A] deeply moving story about love and rejection as much as it is about the impact of European settlement and the destruction of Indigenous culture.' Sunday Age 'A haunting story, beautifully written and quietly subversive. It's a spectacular debut.' ANZ Lit Lovers 'A deeply satisfying nineteenth century family saga of cultural collision set against the remote beauty of the Coorong ... The novel builds to a climax that avoids melodrama, but is charged with high emotion and tension to the very last chapter.' Booktopia