The Exiles

 Christina Baker Kline has done it again with her latest novel, The Exiles (#936).  She's illuminated the lives of female convicts sentenced in the early nineteenth century to transportation to Tasmania for the most trivial of crimes.  She's interwoven the story of an aboriginal girl essentially kidnapped from her family on even more remote Flinders Island on the whim of the Governor's wife.  It makes for a fascinating and disheartening read.  If you're looking for a fairy tale ending to these women's lives, this is not your book, but you'll be very glad read it.

Evangeline Stokes is a young and naïve governess seduced by the son of the family where she is employed.  All alone in the world, she makes an easy target, and is falsely accused of theft while the son is conveniently away.  She is sentenced to fourteen years in Tasmania.  On the converted slave ship used for transporting convicts, she meets Hazel, a teen midwife convicted of stealing a silver spoon, and Olive, a cellmate from Newgate Prison in London.  Not all the prisoners survive the hazardous voyage.  Once in Tasmania, they face a life of servitude until they can earn their ticket of release.

Meanwhile, Mathinna is facing her own trials as the puppet on display as one of Lady Franklin's native curiosities.  She is the sole aboriginal left on Tasmania after the British campaign of extermination.  She may speak English and French, and dress as a European, but she will never, ever fit in with her dark skin and curly hair.  What will happen to her when the Franklins tire of her?

All three of the main characters, Evangeline, Hazel and Mathinna, are so relatable it is easy to be caught up in their joys and woes.  It was hard to put this book down once I started reading.

In the Author's Notes, Ms. Kline mentions that her fascination with Australia began when her father, a history professor, gave her a copy of Robert Hughes 1986 book The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding.  My husband and I read it too before we visited Australia a decade ago, and it sealed our interest in this amazing continent as well.  Although we visited the Port Arthur prison site on Tasmania (a grim place indeed!) when we were there, the Australians were only just beginning to publicly acknowledge and talk about the role the convict transportation system played in their country's development.  The Cascades Women's Prison in Hobart which features in the lives of The Exiles had not yet been opened.  Well, that just gives me another reason to want to go back and revisit this beautiful place.  Highly recommended!