[1] Prim and Dimp Bettany are sisters whose parents were killed in a car accident.
Dimp becomes rather famous as a filmmaker while Prim escapes Australia for Sudan to work for Austfam, as an aid worker.
The sisters are drawn back together when Dimp is given a copy of an ancestor's journal of 19th-century frontier Tasmania.
Writing in The Daily Mail (UK) reviewer Elizabeth Buchan noted: "Rich, measured and reflective, Bettany's Book requires time and concentration - but it is worth it.
Keneally can always be depended upon: wherever and whenever they are set, his books are reassuringly thick and dense.