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liaplaysviolin 's review for:

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline
4.0
adventurous dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

This book was devastating and heartbreaking. The women in the story experience every kind of pain and suffering, yet still hold each other together. I love the author's writing and I couldn't put it down until I finished.

In the acknowledgement, the author goes indepth about her thorough research of female convicts transported to Australia and also the colonization of aboriginal natives. The stor  begins with a young native girl, the daughter of a chieftain, being taken from her home and family by the British governor of the nearby settlement. The book weaves between her life and the lives of women who were incarcerated for very petty crimes, some wrongfully accused, some just trying to survive. The harshness of the penal system was sickening and the inhumanity definitely hurts to read.  A painful, but important, glimpse into this time in history.