Friday Focus: The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings

 

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring Dangerous Women by Hope Adams. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover version borrowed from the library.

Beginning:  I wish I didn't know, she thought. I wish I'd never found out. I wish I could be the person I was this morning, before we sat down to our stitching.

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Page 56:  ". . . If it turns out that one of my women is the culprit, there must have been much of which I wasn't aware and that hurts me more than I can say. I should have done better, worked harder at understanding what ailed them."

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My thoughts:  I have long been fascinated by the colonization of Australia. This historical novel, based on the events of a treacherous journey and depicting the experience of female convicts, is the type of summer read I really enjoy.

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From GoodReads:  Nearly two hundred condemned women on board a sailing ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.

London, 1841. One hundred eighty Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world.

They're daughters, sisters, mothers--and convicts.

Transported for petty crimes.

Except one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice.

As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again.

Each woman called in for question has something to fear: Will she be attacked next? Will she be believed? Because far from land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you’ve already been found guilty?

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