For the crime of robbing a wealthy woman of a silk bonnet and a few guineas, an illiterate Cornish woman faces the hangman's noose. Her death sentence is commuted; instead she finds herself transported in chains on the First Fleet to Botany Bay, New South Wales to serve seven years penal servitude. So begins the extraordinary but true story of legendary Mary Bryant, the only female convict to escape from Botany Bay and whose open-boat escape voyage with her husband, two children and seven other convicts, must rank along with Captain Bligh's as one of the most amazing and courageous in history. Unlike any other biography published on Mary Bryant, author Jonathan King brings the story of this remarkable woman to life by stepping into her shoes. King unfolds Mary's development from a simple, poor Cornish girl to a woman who experienced more in her first twenty-eight years than many in their entire lives.