Out in Paperback / A Commonwealth of Thieves

A Commonwealth of Thieves -- The Improbable Birth of Australia by Thomas Keneally, Anchor Books '06, $15.95, 385 pages, ISBN #140007956X. Index, bibliography, source notes, unillustrated.

Thomas Keneally, best known as the author of Schindler's List, melds the storytelling abilities of a novelist with the scholarship of a historian in describing Britain's creation of a penal colony in Australia in 1786, headed by Royal Navy captain Arthur Phillip. Seems England was awash in criminals and convicts in those days and getting them off British shores would make life safer and more serene.

That's because the bad actors were now thousands of miles away, where they became Capt. Phillips' problem. As acting governor of what was called New South Wales, he had to cope with disease, food shortages, unruly convicts and sometimes hostile Aborigines.  Through it all weaves the story of men who were determined to make better lives for themselves in a new land.