The novel Secret Doubts describes the complex relationships in Australian society in the first half of the nineteenth century. Convicts and their descendants are almost completely powerless; almost everyone is destined for a slave fate. Society despises them. Sarah Markham, the daughter of a rich sheep farmer and an old maid, suddenly falls in love with a handsome Irish convict. Young people will face difficult trials and doubts. Sarah does not believe that the man of her dreams can love her, ugly and homely.