Here is a moving and convincing story of England and Australia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which vividly portrays the ways in which the evils of their time affected the lives of three generations of women. Kitty Kennedy loses her lover before Carolan is born; Katharine, Carolan's child, chooses what must inevitably be a life of danger; but it is Carolan, sensitive and proud, bold and reckless, who must suffer most deeply and who is the central figure around whom events revolve.
Her adventures in London's East End, in Newgate Jail, and in the foul women's quarters on the prison ship transporting her to Australia are told with terrible clarity and a powerful imagination
