The Exiles

 Fiction by Christina Baker Kline

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story is set in the mid-nineteenth-century, in England and Australia, focusing on two young women who are the titular "exiles."

In England, penniless Evangeline is falsely accused of stealing when her only crime is in trusting in a rich young man's false promises. She is sentenced to transportation and sails for Australia, pregnant and alone. Meanwhile, the British government is systematically removing the native population from Australia to make room for all these convict-colonists. Mathinna is the young daughter of a slain Aboriginal chief, forced from her island home to be "civilized" by white people. 

Both these girls, exiled through no fault of their own, have amazing stories. This book is wonderful historical fiction.

I also read recently by this author: A Piece of the World