Christina Baker Kline's novel, The Exiles, has a familiar story of life for a young woman in the 1840s. With very few rights and often taken advantage of, women were subjected to difficult situations, and more often than not, when up against a he said, she said argument, were considered at fault. Throw in the Australian Penal Colony system where a large percentage of those convicted of a crime no matter how small, were given the additional hardship of travelling for months in an old slave ship to Australia.
In The Exiles, a Tasmanian colony of aborigines find themselves in dire straits when the British colonists take their land and try to "civilize" them. On Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) Hazel (a midwife and convict) and Mathinna (a native princess from Flinders Island north-east of Tasmania) struggle to overcome injustices.
My thoughts (spoiler alert):
I did find the book interesting, however, I wish Evangeline had been instrumental in the second half of the book as she was a main character at the beginning.
