Before picking up A River Town, I hadn’t read anything by Keneally, who also wrote Schildler’s List, but, wow, he can write. It was nearly impossible for me to read this book quickly: the characters and locations are so well drawn that anything less than a deliberate reading seems insulting.

Kempsey, the eponymous river town, is located in the Macleay river valley just inland of the east coast of Australia, about 300 miles north of Sydney in New South Wales. The narrative takes place in the (southern hemisphere) summer of 1900, as Australia seeks to become an independent commonwealth in the British empire.

Most non-native residents of Kempsey are English or Irish immigrants, and grocer Tim Shea is no exception. He and his wife Kitty left Ireland seeking the better life offered in the new land. The new land, however, has its own set of challenges, even for a good man like Shea.

Colonial Australia is committing troops to the Boer War in South Africa. Shea is among those unconvinced the war is right, but the pro-war patriots in Kempsey take a dim view of his resistance.

Tim has to sort out his relationship with Bandy Habash, one of the few Muslim immigrants in the Macleay valley. Tim has aversions to him both involuntary—arising from British distrust of non-Christian non-white peoples—and willful: Bandy shines an unwelcome public spotlight on Tim’s life. Yet Bandy is earnest and helpful, and the relationship between the two is complex and rewarding.

The Shea family is another fine Keneally creation: wife Kitty, full of common sense and distrustful of Tim’s whimsy, wild son John, and deliberate daughter Anna.

Dead strangers, orphaned children, Australian politics, new family members, and the plague are all involved in the plot, but this is not a plot-driven story. The characters are king, and it’s lovely when Keneally sets them loose.