Morgans Run (Colleen McCullough)

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Spanning nearly 20 years from 1775 to 1793, Morgan's Run explores the life of Richard Morgan, an Englishman and the son of a tavern owner in Bristol who finds himself convicted of a crime and assigned for transportation. Due to the uprising in America, Britain was no longer able to off-load their convicts and a growing problem needed a solution. The greatest of all human experiments was born; the transportation of thousands of convicts to a place so remote that Captain Cook was the only European to have ever set foot there. Australia.

Shipped off for a year long journey in conditions no better than slave ships, Richard Morgan found himself in the first fleet to colonise this new world and to either survive or die.

This book is a wonderful historical saga that sees Richard Morgan turn from a quiet calm family man into a powerful and resourceful leader of convicts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book although it didn't truly grip me until they had landed in Australia which was later in the story than I would have expected. Being able to get an insight into what the convicts had to deal with due to lack of thought by a government on the other side of the world was fascinating. I also enjoyed that the book moved between the penal colonies in Port Jackson (later to be known as Sydney) and Norfolk Island. At 890 pages this is an epic book so great for the historical fiction lovers like me.