Bolter (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780994593740)

The year is 1820 and Hilda Perry is left to run her fathers Portsmouth Inn with her trusted head brewer, Angus Drew. Working tirelessly to support her household and her languorous husband, Hilda is caught blindsighted one evening with the news of her husband's affair with a young opportunist from the local Men's Club.

Thinking she has thwarted the affair by sending the young tramp from her house, Hilda is later attacked on the way home from her beloved Inn, stripped of her clothes and dressed in rags and thrown into the woman's prison. In a case of mistaken identity she is wrongly tried in court and set on a ship bound for New South Wales penal colony to do a seven year sentence for theft.

Bolter is the story of a woman trying to come to terms with an unjustified, unwanted change of life. The confusion and anger and sadness that must be dealt with while struggling to just stay alive in what surely would have been the most hostile and vulnerable situation for women of that era.

This is a story about dignity, survival and revenge.