BOOK REVIEW: The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline / emotional and heartbreaking

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

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I read and loved the author’s Orphan Train many years ago and couldn’t wait to pick up THE EXILES, just to realize that I wasn’t ready for this emotional and heartbreaking story, which is based on real events.

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 repurposed 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.

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

MY THOUGHTS

The Exiles is a MUST READ for any historical fiction lover. It’s educational, based on real events, heart achingly beautiful, brilliantly written and it will make your heart break.

The book focuses on a time when Britain’s government shipped convicts to Australia to be rid off them. It was almost like ship them off, and forget they ever existed.

And the book did not pull any punches.

Before going into the book I knew a little bit about the events. But nothing prepared me for this book. It was eyeopening, educational, and heartbreaking. The past wasn’t nice to women. And the way convicts were treated bordered on inhuman at times. Especially the conditions in which the convicts were transported and later had to live out their sentences. It broke my heart to hear about mothers and daughters being separated. Not surprising they had little to say. And of course the word of a convict meant nothing.

The arc about Mathinna is actually based on a real person. And if you google her name you can see the portrait that is mentioned in the book and read more about her life. It was shocking to read about the way she was treated and shown off. Like an exotic animal.

In the end, this is a book that won’t let you go anytime soon. It will stay with you. And make you think.

I’m not going to lie, there were parts that I was dreading. But on the other hand, I feel we need to read these kind of books. They are a reminder of all the times when humanity showed its ugly side.

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The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline

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