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A young
convict woman who survives a 3,200-mile voyage in a small boat to escape
from a penal colony in Australia is the subject of The Odyssey of
Mary B, John Durand's sweeping new historical novel, now available.
Along with seven other
convicts, Mary Bryant escaped with her husband and her two young
children in 1792. By then the new colony had struggled and starved for
several years as crops failed and a series of disasters had the colony
reeling.
Of the eleven involved
in the escape, only five survived.
"Mary Bryant is no
stranger to those interested in the history of colonial Australia,"
Durand says, "but I felt no one had given her the recognition she
deserves. She's been trivialized, romanticized, exaggerated, and even
caricatured, but no novelist has portrayed her as a complete person, a
real survivor, and certainly not with a close eye on what we might
regard as historical truth."
The Odyssey of
Mary B, which Durand says remains faithful to the documented
history, picks up the story of his principal character in 1786, when she
was convicted of highway robbery with two other young women.
The three were sent to
Australia in what was called the "First Fleet" to help people
the new English colony, a voyage of 14,000 miles during which almost 50
people died. About 750 convicts were sent in the First Fleet. Shortly
after the fleet reached Australia, Durand's principal character married
a convict named William Bryant.
The Odyssey of
Mary B includes characters drawn
from Royal Marines sent with the First Fleet to protect the colony from
natives and rival European powers. A number of Marines married convict
women and settled in Australia.
Durand also fleshes out
Mary Bryant's relationship with the famous English biographer James
Boswell, who became involved with the convict woman after her return to
England.
"If the idea that
everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame applied in the 1790's, then Mary
Bryant certainly had her fifteen minutes when she was held in Newgate
Prison after her escape," Durand says. "This illiterate young
woman was the talk of London, which is how James Boswell came to take up
her cause."
Like his first
historical novel, The Taos Massacres, Durand's new book includes
maps and images of contemporaneous documents and a chronology of events.
It also includes a roster of the convict women sent to Australia on Mary
Bryant's ship, the Charlotte. Criminal penalties at the time were
harsh, and some of her shipmates were sentenced to seven years exile for
stealing such items as an apron and some linen.
The Odyssey of
Mary B is an 8½ by 5½
paperback of 499 pages and retails for $16.95. The book will be
available through on-line sellers Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and can
also be purchased on-line from www.puzzleboxpress.com.
Durand published his book through
Puzzlebox Press in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.
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