Her first novel,
The Company, was published in 2000 and was a work of
historical fiction based around the wreck of the
Batavia on its maiden voyage off the
Western Australian coast. The book was shortlisted for the 2001 Miles Franklin Award, and won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Southeast Asia/South Pacific region. A second novel,
The God of Spring was published in 2005. Also a work of historical fiction, the novel is set during the
French Revolution and based on the life of artist
Théodore Géricault as he researches and completes his controversial painting,
The Raft of the Medusa. Her third novel, also historical fiction, is called
Fields of Ice and was published in 2011. It follows
Lady Jane Franklin and her attempts to raise money to fund a rescue mission for her husband,
Sir John Franklin, whose ships
HMS Erebus and
HMS Terror were lost while trying to find the
North West Passage. == Personal life ==