The Reed Warbler

Pregnant after rape, seventeen-year-old Josephina Hansen is exiled from her family home in Kiel in the north of Germany. She finds refuge with her sister's Danish family in Sønderborg, then in Hamburg with a philanthropic businessman and, later, a radical journalist and his sister. In 1880 the worsening political situation forces this makeshift family into exile – and a new life in a small farming settlement in the Kaitieke valley in New Zealand. Accompanying Josephina on the journey is an ancie