Author(s): Rosemary Hayes

Teen Fiction

This is the story of a cabin boy called Jan Pelgrom and a soldier involved in a notorious mutiny after the shipwreck of the Batavia off Western Australia in 1629. Unlike most of the other mutineers who were hanged, the two men were marooned on the Australian mainland and become Australia's very first European settlers.

Although the Batavia mutiny and shipwreck are well documented, no one knows what happened to the two men after they were abandoned. However, later European explorers to the region reported coming across Aboriginal Australians with blue eyes. Rosemary Hayes' intriguing novel suggests what might have happened in between.

This is an Intriguing, hard-hitting story: the first half is based on historical events,the second half is fictional. The author, whose Australian background gives authenticity to the story, is establishing herself as a writer on edgy subjects, following her previous books Mixing It, which deals with a relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim teenagers, and Payback, which is about forced marriage.