caviglia reviewed on
Helpful Score: 4
"The Girl From Botany Bay" is a really riveting story from the early days of transporting prisoners to Australia, and it's pretty amazing stuff. This was my first book by Erikson, and she's a solid, if not particularly inspired, writer. She's a little too in love with a cliché for my tastes, and puts too many thoughts in people's heads, i.e. "Mary shivered and was terrified when she looked out over..." when there are pretty much zero primary sources to back this stuff up. The descriptions of conditions aboard the prison ships are really brutal - I might have likes a little more background and historical context to round things out. However, all that aside, Mary's story is really remarkable. One of those amazing, 18th century picaresque lives that you can't believe is not fiction. It really is a page turner and, reservations aside, I am glad that I read it.
