The ExilesThe Exiles

Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is seduced by her employer's son and becomes pregnant. Sent to Newgate Prison, she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Evangeline knows the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on 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. A skilled midwife and herbalist, Hazel offers 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. Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen's Land. Soon all three face an opportunity: for a new way of life.