Colleen McCullough · 1977 · exile

Colleen McCullough's 1977 saga. The Cleary family leaves hardscrabble New Zealand for the vast sheep station of Drogheda in the Australian outback, where daughter Meggie grows up loving the ambitious priest Ralph de Bricassart. Across half a century - drought, fire, and Ralph's rise to Rome - their forbidden love endures like the legendary thorn bird that sings once, impaled, and dies.

1. 1
   Wahine

   The poor New Zealand settlement where the Cleary family struggles, until an inheritance summons them across the Tasman Sea to a great sheep station in Australia.

2. 2
   Drogheda

   The vast sheep station in the New South Wales outback that becomes the family's home and heart, where Meggie grows up and her doomed love for Father Ralph takes root.

3. 3
   Rome

   The seat of the Church to which the ambitious Ralph rises as a cardinal, torn always between his vocation and the woman at Drogheda he can never stop loving.