Book: The Exiles

 Book: The Exiles

Author: Christina Baker Kline

Pages: 400

This is my 227th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

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 7 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 this powerful story of survival.  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 focibly reloacted, their land seized by white colonist.  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.