The Exiles

When I would think about Australia being set up as a penal colony, my thoughts would always be of men prisoners. Some really evil people, some who simply got caught up in some bad stuff but weren't all bad. But I really never thought about the women. In order to grow a country, you'd need men and women, right?

After reading Christina Baker Kline's historical fiction novel, The Exiles, I now see that there were plenty of women prisoners. And like my imagined men, some women were truly evil and many just got caught in some really bad stuff without the opportunity to defend themselves.

I can't really think of a proper way to summarize The Exiles. It's a story of  the resiliency of women set on the backdrop of Australia in the 1840s. Evangeline, Olive and Hazel are "transport" prisoners who meet when they travel together from London to Hobart, present day Tasmania. We follow them through their prisoner years and later.

Another type of exile whose story is told is Matthina, an Aborigine princess. She was first forced to move with her parents from their homeland to another small island. After the death of both her parents, even though she has a stepfather, she's "adopted" by the wife of the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land. 

I would definitely recommend reading this novel if anything I've written above sounds interesting to you.

I read Orphan Train also by Christina Baker Kline several years ago. I enjoyed that book as well. Now off to see what else this author has written.