SOURCE: "The Woman Who Lost Her Children," in New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1993, p. 9.

In the following review, Schaeffer outlines the plot and themes of Woman of the Inner Sea.

What would you do if you were a happily married woman whose husband had an affair with a woman who came to obsess him—and then a mysterious catastrophe took your two beloved children from you forever? Would you have the emotional stamina to survive? If you are one of those fortunate people who hasn't experienced this kind of tragedy, you don't know. Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, the heroine of Thomas Keneally's 20th novel, Woman of the Inner Sea, doesn't know either—even though it has all happened to her—but she is about to find out.

Kate was raised as a modern woman, trained to think of the frenzy of motherhood as something primitive. Wealthy and privileged in...