Kitty Hagerty

Catherine "Kitty" Hagerty has spent most of her life being sent somewhere by someone else.

Born into poverty in Ireland, hunger and a desperate theft put Catherine in the hands of the British justice system and aboard the convict transport Kitty, bound for the barely established colony of New South Wales. There she learns to survive a world of convicts, officers, sailors, fragile loyalties, and powerful men. She becomes a mother, enters the complicated household of colonial official Richard Atkins, earns an absolute pardon, crosses the world back to Britain, and discovers that freedom does not always mean there is a home waiting for you.

When Kitty returns to New South Wales, she begins again on her own terms. She finds work as a seamstress, raises her young daughter Elizabeth, and forms an unexpected bond with fellow former convict Charlotte Badger. Together the women create a family that neither blood nor law arranged. Then handsome sailor Benjamin Burnet Kelly offers them something irresistible: passage aboard the Venus and the promise of better wages in Van Diemen's Land.

Instead, the voyage becomes a nightmare.

When Kelly and his companions seize the Venus in 1806, Kitty discovers that the man she trusted has drawn her, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Charlotte's child into one of the most extraordinary maritime crimes in early Australian history. Betrayal, mutiny, illness, and a desperate crossing of the Tasman carry them toward the Bay of Islands, where the people Kitty first fears may prove kinder than the men who promised her a better life.

A historical timeline at the back of the book separates documented events from later legend, disputed claims, and fictional reconstruction, helping reveal the real woman behind the myth.