A Long Way Home: The Life and Adventures of the Convict Mary Bryant [Hardcover]

Mike Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2005

Mike Walker takes us on a journey from a tiny village in Cornwall, through the criminal stews of Georgian London, to the hold of a disease-ridden convict ship and on to the far end of the Earth. Then, in an isolated prison colony with only a few weeks of supplies between it and starvation we follow Mary Broad on a 3000 mile journey in a 20 foot boat from freedom to shipwreck and re-incarceration in a London prison cell where she faces the death sentence for the second time, or the possibility of starting the terrible experience all over again. Her salvation comes in the unlikely form of James Boswell, lawyer and gentleman who defends her case and wins her freedom.

Mary Broad’s story is brought to life in Mike Walker’s hands with the help of original diaries, state records and newspapers describing the conditions and events of the day, and the incredible hardships and losses suffered by our heroine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Referenced in the Cornish Times - described as a 'real-life historical thriller' (19 May 2005)

“…expands on the bare facts to write a readable account…” (Western Daily Press Bristol, 16^th July 2005)

From the Inside Flap

A Long Way Home is a story of journeys.

MARY BROAD, a Cornish girl, finds herself caught up in the Georgian underworld and sentenced to a journey halfway round the world to an unknown destination where 700 hundred convicts and their keepers are left to scratch a living or starve. Mary wants above all things to go home and with her husband, her two children and six companions, she steals an open boat and makes an amazing voyage of 3,500 miles to Timor. But this is only the beginning of her journey. The worst is yet to come.

ARTHUR PHILLIP, orphaned and without influence, joins the Georgian navy as a volunteer. Through a series of bloody battles he catches the eye of the spymasters at the Admiralty. He is sent on secret missions to France and South America and is then given the toughest mission of all: to found a nation with mutinous convicts and their reluctant keepers.

JAMES BOSWELL travels from provincial Scotland to the temptations and delights of London where he becomes celebrated as Dr. Johnson's biographer. Somehow, society never quite accepts him - he is the perpetual outsider, his own worst enemy - yet he becomes Mary's best and only hope when,, widowed, her children both dead, she faces the gallows.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470093463
• ISBN-13: 978-0470093467
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,868,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Seas, High Drama.....High Praise, November 30, 2005

By 

John Lonergan (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Long Way Home: The Life and Adventures of the Convict Mary Bryant (Hardcover)

As one who has spent his entire life in Australia, I can't help feeling that story of the First Fleet is almost a part of me. From an early age I was fed and I absorbed the legends of poor English children transported to Botany Bay for the crime of stealing a handkerchief or a loaf of bread. Brutal guards, corrupt officials and murderous natives are used to complete the picture, and to help create an Australian ethos which is - and of course I generalise - anti-authority, anti-British and, perhaps most tragic of all, anti-Aboriginal.
Mike Walker's work is, in that context, an important contribution to a more complete understanding of Australia, and Australians. It's also a darned good read.
Mary Bryant (nee Broad) is stereotypical in many ways - poor Cornish fisherman's daughter, driven to petty crime, almost hanged, transported, persistent, strong - and so it goes.
Her story moves from the stereotypical to the extraordinary as she battles all before her to return with her family to her beloved Cornwall.
While the tale itself is remarkable, and worth the price of admission in its own right, I enjoyed the other personalities just as much. James Boswell, Arthur Phillip, Watkin Tench (or, in an hilarious error in the index, "Watkin Fench"), and Ralph Clark all come to life in a real, raw and entertaining way, thanks to Walker's style, and also to the way he has structured the book.
"A Long Way Home" is a neat companion to Tom Kenneally's "The Commonwealth of Thieves," also published in 2005, and providing a more general account of the first four years of English settlement in what we now know as Australia.
Walker is more tightly focused, but no less incisive and insightful. His is a book for the vaguely-interested (in Australian history) and also for the vitally-concerned. It is beautifully presented, and - I'm writing this review in early December - would make a superb Christmas for any thinking person.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mary Bryant's Story, June 14, 2007

By 

Mary Beckman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Long Way Home: The Life and Adventures of the Convict Mary Bryant (Hardcover)

I found the book to be very dsconnected. Definitely full of history but lacking in continunity. Mike Walker had so many sources to use and think he used them all, but many times he lost focus of Mary Bryant and tended to give a history lecture. Very interesting and informative, just didn't care for the structure of the book and presentation of the story.