It is also about the displacement of Aboriginal people during early settlement. This is a novel about survival, identity, loss, love and above all triumph in colonial Australia.

Another character called Maria also a convict adds to this story. Rachel eventually became a great lady in her own right. Other characters such as Rachel a convict join White as his mistress and they have a child called Andrew. Surgeon White is sent to assist the convicts, but realises white people have brought disease to the Aboriginal tribes. Nanberry is an aboriginal boy adopted by Surgeon White when his family was struck by small pox. Nanberry, the protagonist of the novel is struggling to find his identity in a black and white world. Nanberry: Black Brother White is an enchanting historical work of fiction crafted by French in early colonial white settlement times, around 1788 in Sydney Cove. It's absolutely engrossing.' - Herald Sun Read more 'I've been telling all my friends to read this book, and to give it to their kids to read.

'If every Australian history class in the country could be taught by Jackie French, we'd have an entire generation of kids with an enormous thirst for knowledge about our early European settlement and a whole lot more compassion for those who already called this country home.' - Sunday Tasmanian Irresistible for history buffs of any age.' - Good Reading Magazine, five stars

' is one of few masters who can embed historic characters in rattling good tales, and her meticulous research is seamlessly inserted so that you live the detail rather than learn it. Honour Book - CBCA 2012 (Younger Reader's Book of the Year) No less incredible is the enduring love between the gentleman surgeon and the convict girl who was saved from the death penalty and became a great lady in her own right. This true story follows the brothers as they make their way in the world - one as a sailor, serving in the Royal Navy, the other a hero of the Battle of Waterloo.

And yet he is haunted by the memories of the Cadigal warriors who will one day come to claim him as one of their own. Nanberry is clever and uses his unique gifts as an interpreter to bridge the two worlds he lives in.With his white brother, Andrew, he witnesses the struggles of the colonists to keep their precarious grip on a hostile wilderness. It's 1789, and as the new colony in Sydney Cove is established, Surgeon John White defies convention and adopts Nanberry, an Aboriginal boy, to raise as his son. The amazing story of Australia's first surgeon and the boy he adopted.

Nanberry by Jackie French