The Exiles - Christina Baker Kline

Written by Christina Baker Kline
Read by Caroline Lee
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperAudio
Release date: August 25, 2020
Duration: 10:44:22

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 re-purposed 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. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy.

“Caroline Lee offers an outstanding narration of Kline’s well-researched novel, which depicts a shameful moment in Australia’s colonial history. …. Lee paints flesh-and-blood portraits of the women convicts and the inhumane shipboard conditions. Arriving in Hobart Town, they discover that the governor’s wife has removed Mathinna, an Aboriginal child, from her family, and is fancifully conducting an experiment to see if “savages” are trainable. Lee captures the child’s painful adjustments, the emotional essence of the women’s growing friendships, and the inherent racism of the British overlords.”–. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2020,