If I could have read this book in one sitting, I would have! It was just that interesting.
The two biggest takeaways for me were:
1. The story of the Australian Aboriginals. I had no idea what the Aboriginal population was in Australia or exactly what the British government did with them when they started settling that country. I wonder what exactly I learned in school anyway?? Turns out they displaced them & treated them in pretty much the identical deplorable manner the United States did with the Native American population. Maybe that's where we got our Manifest Destiny ideas??! It was appalling the callous way Mathinna was upended from her tribe, solely for the sake of curiosity, then subsequently abandoned. Her loneliness was palpable & by the end of the book, her uniqueness lent itself to a life sentence more heartbreaking than her childhood, hard as that's possible to conceive. That she was a real person (not a fictional character) made her story all the more devastating.
2. That the settlement opportunities in Australia mirrored those in America. I was aware that England shipped prisoners and violent criminals to both America and then to Australia to rid themselves of that unwanted element. If the prisoners could survive the abhorrent conditions aboard ship and then the prison conditions after disembarking, they stood to have more opportunity in their new country (upon completion of their overly harsh sentences) than if they'd stayed in their homeland. Of the three girls whose tales were interwoven in this book, Hazel was the only one who benefited from her transport. They don't all have the happiest of stories but there's a satisfying ending and the book is definitely hard to put down.
Books by Christina Baker Kline have become reliably good reads for me. She makes historical fiction an engaging learning experience in the way she incorporates facts with unforgettable characters. Highly recommend!
