Heather Rose’s mesmerising new novel, A Great Act of Love, draws together themes and settings that have animated her previous work, including an abiding attachment to the landscape of Tasmania, questions of how individuals reckon with the past, meditations on the nature of love, and a fascination with the life of the soul. The book focuses on the efforts of a young woman, Caroline, to remake her life over and over again, from the streets of London to the shores of remote Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was formerly known, interwoven with the stories of others in her orbit. A Great Act of Love draws on stories about ancestors handed down in Rose’s family, blending fact and imagination in the vein of Kate Grenville’s historical fiction.