This was Fitzgerald’s only short story collection, perhaps she’s better known as a novelist and biographer. But what a collection! This story is set in 19th century Van Diemen’s Land (present day Tasmania); Alice Godley is a young woman living with her family near a penal colony who encounters an escaped convict. Fitzgerald’s genius at evoking specific times and places is fully in evidence here, and it has a perfectly earned twist at the end.
First published in The Means of Escape, Flamingo, 2000
A Personal Anthology 