Convictions

by Judith Silverthorne

Jennie Lawrence is 14 years old and she’s sailing to Australia. On a convict ship.

The year is 1842. Jennie Lawrence has been caught stealing and is sentenced to serve seven years in a penal colony in Australia. Like many other women on board, she had been desperate and was only stealing food to feed her family.

Life on board the ship is horrible from the start. The crew is brutal, and they beat the women who disobey orders or talk back. The food is rotten and the drinking water is foul. What little rest the women can get is disrupted by rats, bed bugs, and fleas.

The only way to survive the voyage is if the women band together. And so, with the help of her new family—Sarah, Bridget, and Alice—Jennie learns to never back down, never to give up and, above all, to stay true to her convictions.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2016

Reviews

[Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a female convict ship sent to Australia and New Zealand. An awful time in British history and a lot of these women weren’t convicts at all, just stealing a loaf of bread could get you sent away. A fictionalized account set in 1840 – this story concentrates on Jennie, Alice, Sarah and Kate. Worth reading if you aren’t at all familiar with these events.

[Anne Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Convictions is a fast-paced, compelling read about heart-breaking acts of injustice that are part of our social history. The setting is aboard a ship transporting 250 female convicts to serve their sentences in Australia in 1842. The story unfolds through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Jennie, who was caught taking a moldy bag of oats from a rubbish bin to feed her younger sisters. As we meet the convicts crammed into the bunks around her, each woman has an equally poignant tale of trying to survive at a time when the starving poor were accorded no sympathy from the law. Silverthorne found each woman's 'crime' in the archival records of the time. The author clearly differentiates each character's voice and mannerisms, so it is always clear who is speaking or acting.
We experience Jennie's trauma intimately as she struggles to comprehend her new reality: suffering through putrid living conditions, witnessing cruel punishments and fending off sexual attacks by vicious guards who feel free to do whatever they want. At the same time she experiences acts of kindness and courage by other inmates, including an Irish woman and a woman who survived by being a doxy. (It takes Jennie a while to understand what this was.) Jennie had been taught to avoid the 'heathen Irish' and degenerate doxies she has to re-examine assumptions passed down from her family. She is forced to re-examine her faith because all the prayers repeated in the filthy hold of the ship do not change their conditions. Only their own actions make a difference. The book culminates with a terrible storm where everything falls apart and is rebuilt for a better future.
Some scenes will bring tears to your eyes; others will make you laugh. Still others will arouse intense indignation at the unfairness of their treatment. Your heart will be racing during the life-and-death hurricane on the high seas. Recommended for adolescents and adults who care about social justice issues.

[Read InAGarden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good historical fiction.