The Last Convict by Anthony Hill

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Some sunning to top foredge. A couple of pages have been dog-eared.

Oxford 1863: Young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight, hoping it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. He receives a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia.

When Samuel boards the transport ship Belgravia, he is stripped of his clothing and even his name, and regulations are given on when to rise, eat, clean, and sleep. On arrival at Fremantle Prison, hard labour is added to the mix and he wonders if life can get any worse.

The only solace he finds is a love of reading, which allows the likes of Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist to become his lifelong friends. Samuel was granted a ticket of leave in 1867 and full freedom in 1871, but what sort of life can a man forge for himself in the colony with no skills, no money and no family? Will it be the beginning of the life he has always dreamed of, or do some sentences truly never end?

A colourful recreation of the life and times of the last known convict to be sent to Australia, The Last Convict is a moving study of old age and loneliness, as one social outcast finds meaning in his impoverished life through the power of literature. Meticulously researched and brilliantly woven into an engaging fictional account, it is an unforgettable story by an award-winning writer and historian. (publisher blurb)