Skins

Winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for 2001. A compelling, wild novel based on the true story of a young English woman who survives a shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia in 1835.WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL LITERARY AWARD FOR 2001'She had been left behind on an island with sealers, men who had their own rules. She felt as though she was on the edge of the world, or perhaps she had fallen off into some halfway place. It wasn't living and it wasn't quite hell.'Shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1835, Dorothea Newell is marooned on Middle Island with other survivors. Stranded, they seek shelter in a sealers' camp. The desolate environment of the island camp is a place where men from all corners of the globe struggle to trade seal skins, and the appearance of women-rare commodities in that place and time-opens a further form of trade. As a desperate means of survival, Dorothea is forced into an alliance with the camp's fierce leader,...