A Family of Strangers

The story opens in 1793 with Kate O’Neal boarding the transport that would take her to Australia to serve her seven-year sentence for castrating her employer’s son who raped and brutalised her.
Kate has to survive the year-long voyage, and then the remaining six years of her sentence in a penal colony teaming with men, where convict women are seen as no better than commodity. Driven by her will to survive, she first becomes Lieutenant Kendrick’s convict mistress, and when he loses her in a game of cards, Captain Spencer’s “honey pot”.
The core of her support comes from a group of friends, her family of
strangers . . .