THE SETTLERS
WILLIAM STUART LONG

THE SETTLERS continues the absorbing saga of Jenny Taggart, a courageous girl who has been wrongfully transported to Botany Bay in the early days of the penal settlement.
   With the departure of Governor Phillip in 1792, the officers of the New South Wales corps seize every opportunity to enrich themselves. All trade is in their rapacious hands; they control the Courts and the sale of rum and they at once set about acquiring extensive grants of land, with free convict labour to work it.
   Jenny Taggart, now an emancipist with land of her own, still clings to the dream that Governor Phillip inspired but she is vulnerable to the malign influence of Captain John Macarthur, whose land lies alongside hers. A newly arrived free settler, Timothy Dawson, offers protection to Jenny and her young son Justin but he is infatuated with the elegant Henrietta Spence, daughter of a wealthy East India Company nabob, Jenny becomes entangled in a complex pattern of relationships and emotions, which are further complicated by the arrival of Justin's father in a King's ship . . .
   A sequel to the international best-seller THE EXILES, the story is an unforgettable tale of life in the early days of the New South Wales colony.