From Passenger on, Collins signalled Keneally's rise in reputation by placing his name above the titles on covers. The mark of respect was matched by three short-listings for the Booker Prize (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, Confederates). Through the 1970s Keneally had also built up a comfortable, if fluctuating, income. Public Lending Right payments for the 1979– 80 financial year showed that all titles prior to Passenger were circulating in Australia, the most popular being Bring Larks and Heroes, Three Cheers for the Paraclete and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. In addition, there were television and film rights, play rights and royalties and payments for journalistic pieces. Book royalties were supplemented by US rights sales. Part of the American advance on Confederates added to the UK advance less the agent's fee netted around $18,000. There were some moderate amounts too for foreign rights. Total receipts of at least $26,587 represented a mid-range income in Australia. Keneally had achieved his ambition of supporting himself entirely from his writing. As far as literary recognition went, however, it looked as though Peter Ackroyd's dictum about the Booker Prize would prove true: ‘once a short-listed author, always a short-listed author’.

The Keneallys sold their home in Avalon and bought another at Bilgola, right on the beach. This would remain the family centre until the children left home and Tom and Judy felt the need to downsize. Their settled existence matched the career in that it had reached a plateau – sustaining, but not totally satisfactory for a man in his forties and still full of ideas. The author's eminence at home rested on his novels dealing overtly with national concerns, and Richard Walsh, by then managing Angus & Robertson, offered to include Bring Larks and Heroes in his Australian Classics series. In Britain, Keneally's reputation rested on Gossip from the Forest. The appearance of Confederates sparked US interest and won the Australian author election as a ‘Knight of Mark Twain’ by a literary group in recognition of his services to American literature.

Some subsidiary events during this period provided an outlet for Keneally's ‘impetuous’ temperament.