Spanning more than five decades and three generations,
Colleen McCullough's best-selling novel, "The Thorn Birds", pivots around the lifelong love between the ambitious Catholic priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart, and Meggie Cleary, the beautiful niece of a vast sheep station owner in the arid 1920s Australian Outback. Against the backdrop of unrequited loves, bitter passions, desperate inner conflicts, and family tragedies, the mortal and flawed priest yields under the burden of choice, tormented by desire. From the corridors of the Vatican to the sun-kissed islands of Greece to the ancestral farm, Drogheda, two ardent lovers stand powerless before God's will, bound by an unattainable and eternally forbidden love. How far are they willing to go in the name of love?
—Nick Riganas