'Fourteen-year-old convict Tom Clay lives in a shepherd’s hut in the bush, protecting his master’s sheep from wild dogs. When a vicious fellow shepherd returns to ensure there are no witnesses to his crimes, the bush-crafty Tom and his hapless mate Rowdy face a life-and-death battle to survive.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'One of the few advantages a contemporary writer of historical fiction has derives from working in a context with laxer censorship laws. Representations of sexuality and violence once proscribed can be incorporated to better approach the social conditions of the period. With regard to narratives about Australia’s convict history, Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life was written after transportation had ceased to the eastern Australian colonies, while farther west Fenian convict John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne was published after he had escaped from Western Australia and found sanctuary in the United States.' (Introduction)
'One of the few advantages a contemporary writer of historical fiction has derives from working in a context with laxer censorship laws. Representations of sexuality and violence once proscribed can be incorporated to better approach the social conditions of the period. With regard to narratives about Australia’s convict history, Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life was written after transportation had ceased to the eastern Australian colonies, while farther west Fenian convict John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne was published after he had escaped from Western Australia and found sanctuary in the United States.' (Introduction)
