Lady Jane Franklin selects Mathinna from among the Palawa children on Flinders Island to take into her home.

A family servant discovers the Whitstone ruby ring on Evangeline's dresser, triggering accusations of theft.

A judge sentences Evangeline to fourteen years of convict transport to Australia despite her protests of innocence.

Hazel Ferguson arrives on the Medea and is shoved violently to the deck by sailor Danny Buck.

The repurposed slave ship Medea sets sail from London carrying Evangeline, Hazel, and Olive as prisoners.

Buck attempts to rape Hazel on deck; Evangeline attacks him with a knife to stop him.

Olive goes into labor aboard the Medea and delivers a stillborn son.

Evangeline gives birth to a daughter during a violent storm at sea with Hazel and Doctor Dunne assisting.

Buck pushes Evangeline over the ship's railing into the ocean, killing her shortly after she gives birth.

Hazel and Doctor Dunne work together aboard the Medea to keep Evangeline's newborn daughter alive.

Mathinna gets drunk at the Franklins' spring party and dances wildly, causing Lady Jane to reject her entirely.

Lady Jane Franklin abandons Mathinna in Van Diemen's Land when the family returns to London.

Hazel poisons Buck with Angel's trumpet flowers when he threatens to kill Ruby and rape Hazel.

A grown Ruby confronts Cecil Whitstone in London, accusing him of abandoning Evangeline and ruining her life.

Ruby refuses to accept the ruby ring Cecil offers, vindicating her biological mother's memory.

The Exiles follows three women whose lives are shaped by the brutal machinery of the British colonial system. Mathinna, an Aboriginal Palawa girl, is forcibly taken from her homeland by the governing Franklins, who treat her as a civilizing experiment and eventually discard her. Evangeline, a young London governess falsely accused of theft, is sentenced to transport to Australia aboard a repurposed slave ship, where she forms fierce bonds with two fellow convicts. On the voyage, she defends her young friend Hazel from a violent sailor named Buck, ultimately losing her life in the confrontation shortly after giving birth to a daughter. Hazel and the ship's doctor work together to protect Evangeline's baby Ruby, while Mathinna is abandoned by the Franklins and left adrift between two worlds. Decades later, a grown Ruby returns to London to confront her biological father and refuse the symbol of her mother's ruin, vindicating Evangeline at last.

The headline events that drive the full story from beginning to end.

Evangeline meets fellow convict Olive at Newgate Prison, who bluntly tells her Cecil will never come to save her.

Mathinna is transported by ship from Flinders Island to Hobart Town to live with the Franklins.

Lady Jane takes Mathinna's handmade shell necklaces for her curio collection despite Mathinna's objections.

Quaker women board the Medea before departure; Mrs. Fry gives Evangeline a numbered tin identification ticket.

Hazel offers Evangeline a piece of ginger root that cures her severe seasickness on the Medea.

A sailor falls from the ship's mast, and Hazel immediately treats his broken leg, openly defying Doctor Dunne.

Cecil's monogrammed handkerchief turns up among stolen goods aboard the Medea and is returned to Evangeline.

Olive and Evangeline tend to an injured Hazel in their berth after Buck's assault; Buck is sentenced to lashing.

Waluka, Mathinna's pet possum and last connection to Flinders Island, is killed by a politician's dog.

Hazel chooses the name Ruby for Evangeline's baby, wrapping the tin ticket and handkerchief together for the child.

The Medea arrives in Hobart Town; Doctor Dunne lists Hazel as Ruby's mother on the birth certificate.

Hazel meets fellow midwife Maeve Logan at the Cascades prison and learns about dangerous native Australian plants.

An anonymous informant tells the prison superintendent that Hazel is not Ruby's biological mother, stripping her visiting rights.

Hazel and Ruby encounter Mathinna drunk and disheveled at a local market; Mathinna refuses Hazel's offer of help.

Adult Ruby secures a medical apprenticeship with Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, the first female surgeon in Britain.

Across the novel, a series of pivotal secondary moments define how each woman copes with the forces working against her. Evangeline's meeting with the outspoken Olive at Newgate is her first real lesson in the harsh truths of the world, while small acts of kindness on the Medea—a ginger root remedy, a returned handkerchief—reveal the fragile bonds of community among the condemned. Mathinna's losses mount quietly: her shell necklaces are seized, her beloved possum is killed, and her identity erodes with each passing month in the Franklins' household. Hazel's resourcefulness emerges through her healing skills and the network she builds at sea and in prison, culminating in a fragile reunion with Ruby that is nearly destroyed by an anonymous betrayal. The three women's paths continue to cross even after their immediate crises pass, most visibly when Hazel and Ruby encounter the lost Mathinna at a market, and when Ruby steps onto the world stage as a medical professional.

Significant moments that shaped each woman's journey through exile and survival.

Mathinna slips away into the forest to take a final private farewell of her homeland before the Franklins take her.

Evangeline realizes she is pregnant when Agnes calls her the laughingstock of the Whitstone household.

Evangeline shoves Agnes down the stairs in a moment of rage and is immediately arrested by police.

Quaker women visit Newgate Prison, and Evangeline feels her unborn baby kick for the very first time after they leave.

Mathinna discovers her bedroom windows at Government House have been boarded shut on Lady Jane's orders.

Doctor Dunne reveals to Evangeline that his father's malpractice scandal destroyed the family name and forced him to sea.

A painter completes Mathinna's portrait, and she realizes how completely her identity and past have been stripped away.

Mathinna frees Sir John's caged cockatoo from captivity, wishing she could escape her own captivity just as easily.

Mathinna falls ill with fever while the Franklins are away, and Hazel secretly returns to Government House to nurse her.

Hazel steals Mathinna's shell necklaces from Lady Jane's curio room and returns them before Mathinna is sent to the orphanage.

Hazel is sentenced to two weeks in solitary confinement and has her hair shorn as punishment for lying about Ruby.

Olive warns Hazel that escaped convict Buck is planning to abduct Ruby from the orphanage as revenge.

Doctor Dunne rescues Ruby from the orphanage and hires Hazel at his private practice, reuniting the makeshift family.

Hazel confesses to poisoning Buck, and she and Doctor Dunne share their first kiss.

A flash-forward reveals that Ruby's daughters will attend medical school and establish Australia's first women's hospital.

The Exiles is built on moments of realization and choice that redirect each woman's story. Mathinna's farewell to her homeland and her gradual recognition that she belongs to neither world form the tragic core of her arc, crystallized when she sees her own erasure reflected in a painted portrait and finally frees a caged bird as a symbol of her own captivity. Evangeline's pregnancy, revealed through humiliation, becomes the unexpected source of her growing strength, and a rare act of kindness at Newgate offers grace before the brutality of the voyage ahead. On the Medea, alliances and revelations slowly reshape the balance of power between the prisoners and the men who control them, with Doctor Dunne's own backstory revealing the cost of social hierarchy for men as well. Hazel's suffering in solitary confinement marks her lowest point before she engineers her own redemption by poisoning Buck and building a chosen family with Ruby and Doctor Dunne. By the final flash-forward, the transformation is complete: the suffering of one generation becomes the fuel for the next, as Ruby's daughters carry the women's legacy into a new era.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define the three women.