Little Exiles - Robert Dinsdale

It's post World War Two England, and we meet young Jon Heather, living with his mother and his older twin sisters in Yorkshire. Jon has never known his father but still holds out a hope that he will return one day soon; Jon imagines his father having adventures overseas. Struggling to cope, and with fading health, his mother takes Jon one day and leaves him at the Chapeltown Boy's Home of the Children's Crusade, in Leeds, where he meets and befriends Peter, who is an older, supportive boy, and George, who is younger and very scared. Jon believes initially that he is only there temporarily, that his mother is coming back for him in a couple of months. Most of the boys have been told their parents are dead. They are watched over by mysterious, menacing men in black gowns, including, one, Judah Reed, who is Australian, and leads them on their voyage further from everything they have known; they are taken on a ship to Australia, with promises of a better life, a good future. When they arrive though, they are divided up and set to work on the land, doing hard strenuous, sometimes grim, work, strictly supervised by the men in black and the cottage mothers, and at times harshly disciplined. Jon is ten when he arrives there.

It's a very sad story based on events that actually happened - forced child migration between Britain and Australia after World War Two, in order to provide inexpensive labour and to further populate this country within the empire. I am glad that the author has chosen to tackle and highlight this important, true episode from history in his fiction here. I knew little about this prior to reading this novel; though this isn't a factual account, it presents us with an idea of what went on that to me felt very real, and because of the sadness and hardship it could be harrowing and I didn't find it an easy read at times, and it's difficult to understand the deception perpetrated by those involved; I believe this was a church based organisation. As Robert Dinsdale writes in his acknowledgements, `though Little Exiles is a work of fiction, the world it presents was frighteningly real...'

The author depicts very well how the boys feel, what happens to them, and how the boys change through the experiences they endure, and the unlikely friendships that are formed under these strange and difficult circumstances. The three boys, Jon, Peter and George, were vividly and roundly drawn, I could imagine little George in his terror, and Peter being strong and trying to help him, reassuring him at one point on the boat that `it's going to be a grand adventure.'

I felt the palpable sense of fear and abandonment that Jon, George, Peter and the others experience knowing that they have been left at the boys home, separated from their families and everything that they have ever known, and then to face the further upheaval of being taken across the world with little idea what will happen to them there. Jon wants to come home. Many were told that their mothers had died. One moment that struck me as particularly poignant was when we learn that some of the smaller boys can't remember when their birthday is, and there's no one they can ask who will know, now. The style of narration is not overly emotional, though - the events speak for themselves - and the writing used seemed fitting for portraying this tale. I might have preferred the story to be slightly shorter, but Little Exiles was an evocative, convincing and very moving read bringing to the fore a part of history that ought to be better known. I think it will certainly linger in my mind.

Published by HarperCollins