Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to similar audio books?
Excellent
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Excellent
Advantages:
Takes you to another world
Disadvantages:
House work doesn't get done
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
This is the second book of Lesley's I've read.
I've got to say its one of the best books I read.
I went to the local library and had to get it in large print as they hadn't got it in any other at the time.
I read it in 3 days, at work in lunchtime,cooking tea, watching tv, surfing the net, just couldn't put it down.
The main character is a young woman called Mary Broad who steals a hat which starts off a harrowing live ahead. The book is based in 1786 and because of her crime she is due to be hanged, however this is the start of when convicts are being sent to Botany Bay and Mary is sent there to serve her sentence. The journey there is remarkable she sees sights and grows up rapidly. She learns to sell her body for food and to get items to help the other women too. This gets her pregnant with her first child Charlotte named after the ship she travelled to this new world on. On the ship she meets another convict called Will Bryant who she proposes to as she hears that having a strong man will help her survive in Botany Bay.
So after a few months when they arrive they marry.
Life is not very good over in Botany Bay she stuggles to bring up her daughter with the little food she has, she makes friends with the natives and learns which grubs to eat. Her husband is the main food provider and also for the rest of the convicts, he provides fish which he catches. One day he keeps a few back for his family and is caught and is flogged. Mary sees this and decides she is going to escape and plans this trip to Kupang. During the next few months of planning and getting the details for this trip she finds Will drinking rum and bragging about he will dump Mary when he gets out of here and they are not legally married. She decids to trap him and have his child, so little Emmanuel is born.
The time comes to leave and the journey to the new land is horrendous, they nearly all perish, but Mary sees them through.
The story carries on in the same way but sadly Will, and Emmanuel dies. Mary is then sent back to England with Charlotte, to be sentenced due to escaping, Charlotte does not make the journey and is buried at sea.
Back in England Mary is eventually pardoned and the public take her to their hearts. She eventually goes back to her family in Cornwall.
This book was brilliant but when I got to the last page Lesley had wrote that this story I read was a true one
She goes on to say that no records show that she married or went on to have another family so I hope prehaps she left this country and found love elsewhere
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