This is the first book to apply new academic understandings of the convict transportation system to explore the lives of individual convicts. In searching for the convict voice, each chapter is a detective story in miniature, either an exercise in discovering the identity behind a particular account or a piecing together of a convict life from the scattered fragments of a tale. Many issues of great contemporary interest arise from these stories, including the multicultural nature of Australian colonial society and, above all, the importance of love and hope.