Remember Me by Lesley Pearse

An epic story, one of my favorites. Mary is a 19 y.o. woman who gets transported for a simple crime of theft, after first being sentenced to hang. The jailers don't intend to transport her immediately, so she is sent to one of the prison hulks in the harbor near England, for quite some time. Conditions are deplorable, everyone is kept in chains all the time, locked in the dirty, dank holds of the ship. People die all of the time. There is never enough of anything, especially food, clothing, or water. Mary has a strong personality, she fights for basic human rights for herself and those around her. Some battles she wins, some battles she loses.

Eventually, she is transferred to a sailing vessel, the Charlotte, which will carry her to New South Wales, to a new continent that the English have discovered and intend to put Mary ashore with hundreds of other prisoners, male and female. The book follows Mary, as she struggles to survive in this hostile environment. This is a work of historical fiction, but it has many details that are based upon true events that occurred with the first waves of ships to England's new penal colony.

If you have children while you are in the colony, they become prisoners, also. Poor little children whose only crime is to have been born on the wrong side of the ocean. Mary is frantic that her children will be raised in such a grim environment. Never knowing that elsewhere in the world, there are people who behave humanely and lovingly.

Highly recommended. Much gratitude to #netgalley @netgalley and #rememberme for the complimentary copy, I was under no obligation to post a review.