Morgan's Run - Hardcover

McCullough, Colleen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684853299 ISBN 13: 9780684853291

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Synopsis

In a novel of sweeping narrative power unequaled since her own beloved worldwide bestseller "The Thorn Birds," Colleen McCullough returns to Australia -- this time with the story of its birth. At the center of her new novel is Richard Morgan, son of a Bristol tavern-keeper, devoted husband and loving father, sober and hardworking craftsman. By the machinations of fate and the vagaries of the 18th-century English judicial system, he is consigned as a convict to the famous "First Fleet," which set sail, bearing, as an experiment in penology, 582 male and 193 female felons sentenced to transportation, in May of 1787 for the continent that Captain Cook had discovered only a few years earlier. The word "epic" is overused, but no other word can do justice to one of the most grueling and significant voyages in human history or to the courage of the convicts whose sufferings were not ended but had only just begun when they set foot on Australian soil at Botany Bay on January 19th, 1788. Of those convicts, Richard Morgan stood out, not only for his strength and his calm determination to let no man bully him, but also for his intelligence, his fair-mindedness, his common sense, and his willingness to help others. To these qualities must be added a certain innate dignity that hinted, even in the most terrible conditions, at a life marked by tragedies that would have broken most men. In Richard Morgan, Colleen McCullough has created one of her most compelling characters. We see through Morgan's eyes the two worlds in which the story takes place: that of 18th-century Bristol, where Morgan was born and expected to live out his life, and that of a convicted felon sent to settle ahostile new world. When the book begins, Richard Morgan is a contented man -- happily married, with a child he adores. Then, piece by piece, his idyll crumbles until he finds himself led into an ambiguous relationship with a beautiful young woman, whose dissolute protector seeks vengeance on Morgan to protect his own skin. He endures the agonies of bereavement and financial loss, incarceration in prison and aboard the notorious "hulks," then the horrors of the journeys to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island, where he finds against all odds a new love and a new life. Richard Morgan's story is true, but in making Morgan the central figure of her novel, Colleen McCullough has created a hero whom no reader will ever forget; she has written not only a great adventure and a powerful love story, but also a book that combines the elements of "Tom Jones" and" Mutiny on the Bounty." "Morgan's Run" is great fiction, full of drama, passion, history, love, and hatred, full-blooded and totally engrossing, a stunning work that is at once rich entertainment -- and a revelation.

About this title

Review:

McCullough's Morgan's Run is a massive historical panoply presented to the reader in vivid poster colours, while powerful, larger-than-life characterisation galvanizes a narrative of nigh-operatic proportions. Set once again in Australia, it is a return to the grand level of The Thorn Birds.

McCullough's theme is the dispatching of criminals (and other undesirables) from the mother country to the unknown wilds of Australia in the 18th century. The brutality and savagery of the transportation scenes are conveyed with maximum impact, but it is the day-to-day existence of the exiles, abandoned on the inhospitable Australian continent, that most exercises McCullough's imagination.

Her protagonist Richard Morgan is an unlikely figure (a convicted felon who is both tough and resourceful but also sensitive and highly educated) but he's just the kind of hero to bestride an adventure of as large a scale as this. As Morgan attempts to deal with both natural disasters and the mendacity and subterfuge of his fellow survivors, we see a microcosm of the hardy society that Australia was to become taking shape before our eyes. The brilliantly realised and fastidiously researched period detail of the epic setting makes this most memorable (reproductions of maps, paintings, ships' plans and other material lends verisimilitude).

McCullough has created a yarn that comprehensively grips for all its 600-odd pages; her skill at creating convincing period dialogue being the strong thread that runs throughout:

"Your men stay here because I have no other place to stow them," said Sinclair. "As a matter of fact, they are occupying valuable space my firm contracted to fill up with more useful cargo than a lot of thieving, rum-swilling twiddle-poops not clever enough to get into the navy nor rich enough to get into the army. Ye're the entire world's leavings, Ross, you and your marines. Cluttering up my crew's galley, with two dozen dogs - look at my boot! Ye lowlands bastard without a mother!" "Who's the lowlands bastard, ye Glasgow bitch's by-blow?" There was a pause as both the combatants searched wildly for a new and mortally wounding thing to say.

--Barry Forshaw

Review:

"A rich compelling epic" (Daily Mail)

"A good yarn... based on rigorous historical research" (Belfast Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684853299
• ISBN 13: 9780684853291
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608