11/06/2025
What a surprising treasure to discover Bernice Barry’s novel SARAH EVANS (Echo Publishing 2024). While I found the cover (and title) disappointingly banal, once I opened the pages I was immediately entranced by the beautiful literary prose, the complex characters and the compelling narrative, which pulled forward at a strapping pace until the tense and unsettling ending.
In this historical novel, Barry explores the life of Sarah Evans, a real person found only in snippets of prison records, signing her name with an X as she was illiterate. The story begins in 1798 when the destitute 18-year-old, struggling daily to find sustenance, shelter and a means to earn money, is caught stealing in the company of one of her best childhood friends. While she is sentenced to transportation to the colonies, she is instead transferred (in secret) into the hands of Thomas Aris, the cruel, arrogant and narcissistic governor of the notorious prison, Coldbath Fields, in London.
Throughout her life, what she thinks might be a small freedom soon obviously becomes a major detriment or punishment or trauma or torture. As a poor and uneducated woman, Sarah has very little agency in her life but is tossed from one situation to another as she tries to assert her innocence and gain her freedom.
This is a novel about corruption at the highest levels of government and bureaucracy, the tenuous and slippery rights of the poor and disenfranchised, the onerous burden on women to ‘shut up and take it’, the sacrifices a mother will make for her children, the chilling ways men sometimes choose to manipulate and abuse women for their own pleasure or profit, the strength of women’s friendships and how – over the years – they can find impossible ways to support and care for each other, and how one woman dreams of ‘liberty of mind’ in the fragile belief that it may be just as much a woman’s right as a man’s privilege.
With themes of justice, revenge, loyalty, sacrifice, family and domestic abuse, institutional abuse, friendship, guilt, forgiveness, hope, ambition, determination and passion, SARAH EVANS is an unforgettable historical tale that seems as real as if it happened yesterday. Barry is a beautiful writer and some of the phrases and language sing off the pages.
At its heart, this is a story about a mother and her children (and the strength and perseverance she will show in protecting them); a woman with a curious mind who, despite her impoverished and diminished circumstances, continues to pose questions of justice, freedom, chance, power, exploitation and optimism. The actual court transcripts included towards the end of the book are spare and telling and give even more weight to Sarah’s story (which Barry has researched and used as inspiration, while fictionalising much of her life). I was in a constant state of anxiety as Sarah forges bravely through the messiness of her life, courageously attempting to stand up for herself and her children and those she cares for, while being beset at every turn by the betrayal and abuse of the powerful.
Despite taking place over 200 years ago, this story felt as real and authentic to me as a modern tale, and Sarah’s trials and tribulations will stay with me, as the fates of her children will haunt me.
