AustLit

Hetty Sorrel, the beautiful but shallow farm girl from George Eliot's Adam Bede, was seduced by the dashing Captain Arthur Donnithorne, heir to Donnithorne Manor. Condemned to death for the murder of her newborn baby, Hetty was saved from the gallows at the last minute and her sentence commuted to exile. At the end of Adam Bede, we are told that Hetty died six years later, a broken penitent. But did she? It is the early years of the 19th Century. We follow Hetty on her voyage to Australia, on board what was 'no more than a floating brothel'. Assigned as maid of all work to the farmer Williamson, whose ambition is to populate the fledgling colony from his own loins, she joins a band of Aboriginal bush-rangers, famed for their ferocity, dress sense and polished manners. Hetty's adventures are only beginning. (Publisher blurb)