Gordon Brown
This book must go into the Guiness Book of Records as the first book published at the age of 95.
It is a rollicking good yarn which imagines over 7000 boys, waifs, strays, vagabonds and petty thieves hoovered up from the slums of Britain and after many months at sea confined in cramped and overcrowded quarters, deposited at Point Puer opposite the dreaded convict settlement of Port Arthur.
Of these 7000 boys only three ever escaped.
Marjorie Davey’s novel ‘Never to Return’ tells the ficitional story of one of those escapees.
He meets up with another escapee, a young Aboriginal boy who helps him survive. Encounters with settlers and bushrangers follow.
This book is in the best tradition of Richard Flanagan and I am sure Steven Speilberg will soon come knocking on Marjorie’s door.
I loved this book and am pretty sure you will too …
The Media Release …
HOBART, Australia – Author Marjorie Mcardell Davey has recently released “Never to Return” (published by Xlibris AU), a novel that recreates the drama, hardship and intrigue of one of Australia’s most fascinating and perhaps terrifying historical sites – Point Puer Boys’ Prison.
Much has been written about the main adult penal settlement at Port Arthur in Tasmania, but “Point Puer” is described as “the first reformatory built exclusively for juvenile male convicts in the British Empire. Three thousand boys, some as young as nine years old, were sentenced to this prison between 1834 and 1849.” When Davey visited Point Puer several years ago, she wondered what happened to the three teenage boys who were the only ones who successfully escaped what had been the remotest penal colony in the world at that time.
In her debut novel, “Never to Return,” Davey imagines the incredible journey of one of those boys, as he braves the rugged Tasmanian bush. A friendship develops between two characters that may not have occurred under ordinary circumstances. It is a tale of high adventure, extreme survival, unlikely friendships and the strong desire for freedom. She masterfully blends history and fiction to recreate an incredible survivor story set against a notorious episode in Australia’s history.
