Dangerous Women
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4.1 • 34 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Named one of 2021’s Most Anticipated Historical Novels by Oprah Magazine ∙ Cosmopolitan ∙ and more!
Nearly two hundred condemned women board a transport ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.
London, 1841. One hundred eighty Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world.
They're daughters, sisters, mothers—and convicts.
Transported for petty crimes.
Except one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice.
As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again.
Each woman called in for question has something to fear: Will she be attacked next? Will she be believed? Because far from land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you’ve already been found guilty?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adams's debut transforms an actual 19th-century sea voyage into a striking personal drama. In April 1841, a transport ship sets sail from London with 180 women convicted of minor crimes aboard. During the three-month voyage to the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), the ship's matron, Kezia Hayter, chooses a group of convicts to sew a presentation quilt. Near their destination, someone stabs one of the quilters, Hattie Matthews, and it becomes clear that another member of the group has secretly stolen the place of another woman on the ship in order to flee from justice for a much more serious crime. Evocative sketches of those on board reveal the realities of poor women's lives with a gently feminist, but still comfortably period, aesthetic, as do the difficulties that Kezia has in having her insights respected by the men investigating Hattie's stabbing. The romance that develops between Kezia and the ship's captain comes off as blandly inevitable, but the undercurrent of gossip around the relationships the other women pursue is much juicier. Readers who like their historical mysteries well-grounded in real history will be rewarded.
Customer Reviews
Interesting
Great book