The Exiles
A Novel

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEROPTIONED FOR TELEVISION BY BRUNA PAPANDREA, THE PRODUCER OF HBO'S BIG LITTLE LIES“A tour de force of original thought, imagination and promise … Kline takes full advantage of fiction — its freedom to create compelling characters who fully illuminate monumental events to make history accessible and forever etched in our minds."" — Houston ChronicleThe author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in nineteenth-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society. Seduced by her employer’sson, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, isdischarged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious NewgatePrison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentencedto “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Thoughuncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries willbe born on the months-long voyage to this distant land.
During the journey on arepurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangelinestrikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils whowas sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny whereEvangeline is guileless, Hazel—a skilled midwife and herbalist—is soonoffering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety offavors.Though Australia has beenhome to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government inthe 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views thenatives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, theirland seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, theorphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted bythe new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.In this gorgeous novel, ChristinaBaker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in abeautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a freshperspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna. Whilelife in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some,an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom.Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story ofgrace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and theunfettering of legacy.