AustLit

'The historian Rebe Taylor has a fascination with Australia’s southern islands and their capacity to contain or magnify issues of identity for their indigenous inhabitants, if not for their broader populations. Her first book, Unearthed: The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island (2012), traced the forgotten story of the Tasmanian Aboriginal women taken there by British and American sealers during the early nineteenth century and the subsequent history of their families. Taylor was able to weave her journey of detection together with the islanders’ own hunches and clues as to their families’ misty origins. She was well aware that behind this remarkable story of retrieval loomed a darker tale of loss, violence, and guilt, centred on the island of Tasmania itself. Into the heart of Tasmania would be her next assignment.' (Introduction)