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In Ireland in 1795, young housemaid Elizabeth is arrested and charged with sedition.
On the transport ship, confined to the captain's cabin, Elizabeth must please and obey. As the captain's ship wife, she survives one of the most notorious transportation voyages to New South Wales. Six convicts are flogged to death. This so exceeds the usual brutality of transportation that Governor Hunter convenes a magistrates' court to hear charges against the captain.
Shunned by her fellow convicts, scorned by free settlers, and pregnant with the captain's child, Elizabeth must establish a home and a life in the rough town of Sydney.The Ship Wife challenges assumptions about female convict history. It tells the story of a real woman's struggle for dignity and independence in an Empire built on slavery and injustice.
Novelist Anne Vines won the Boroondara Prize in 2014 and the Keith Carroll Award in 2020 for short stories. She was shortlisted for the Alan Marshall Short Story Award 1987, The Age Short Story Award 2009, the Henry Handel Richardson Short Story Award 2011, and the international Wasafiri New Writing Prize, 2014. She was commended in the Varuna Harper-Collins Award in 2007 for her novel's "compelling, very exciting voice" and "character-driven unusual twists" which "build up a head of steam". Her novel, A Good Killer, entered in the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2008, was commended by the judges for its "fast-paced storytelling". Anne's short fiction was published in Word U Up 2014, Award Winning Australian Writing 2015, Wasafiri Magazine Online 2016, Ring of Words 2018 and Boroondara Literary Awards Anthology 2020. Anne has worked on her novels with Peter Bishop and Helen Barnes-Bulley at Varuna, with writers Lee Kofman, Toni Jordan, Sydney Smith and Janey Runci, and with editor Irina Dunn. Anne Vines completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, concentrating on Literature and the history of Australia and Britain. She taught at secondary schools in country Victoria, Melbourne and London and at the Council for Adult Education, Melbourne. She managed student welfare, English curriculum and staff professional development. She co-wrote the VCE English and Literature courses and was a public examination assessor of those subjects. Anne has lived in England and Germany, and for shorter periods in Ireland, Wales, Spain, Italy and France. While traveling to UK, Ireland, Europe, USA, South America and Asia, she carried out research in libraries, archives and communities for her novels, including The Ship Wife.
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