The exiles : a novel / Christina Baker Kline.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kline, Christina Baker, 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Exile (Punishment)--Fiction.

Exile (Punishment).

Women--Australia--Fiction.

Women.

History.

Penal colonies.

Australia.

Female friendship--Fiction.

Female friendship.

Penal colonies--Australia--Fiction.

Governesses--Fiction.

Governesses.

Life change events--Fiction.

Life change events.

Midwives--Fiction.

Midwives.

Australia--History--19th century--Fiction.

Genre:

Fiction.

Historical fiction.

History.

Physical Description:

371 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2020.

Summary:

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel -- a skilled midwife and herbalist -- is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors. Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen's Land. In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Green fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780062356345

0062356348

OCLC:

1183029346