Mary Bryant’s great escape from Australian prison comes to life in novel

Meg Keneally tells how childhood stories told by her father, Schindler’s Ark author Thomas, inspired her novel

She is celebrated as the first woman to escape from life as a convict in Australia, a fearless Cornishwoman who stole a boat in 1791 with her family and other convicts and sailed to East Timor in search of a new life. Now Mary Bryant and her remarkable journey – which ended in her being recaptured and sent back to England – has inspired a historical novel, Fled, by Australian author Meg Keneally.

Keneally, daughter of Booker prize-winning Thomas, who wrote the novel on which Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was based, said it was her father who first introduced her to Bryant’s astonishing story.

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