A Handful of Dust — Tony Nash

The English legal system of the late 18th century had much to answer for, with many innocent men and women convicted of crimes they did not commit. Thomas Nash is one of them. He is happily looking forward to Michaelmas 1786, when the final instalment of an 85-year loan will be repaid and the family's fortunes restored, but Fate has other ideas. His benefactor, Lord Rainforde, is murdered by his bastard nephew, Silas, who usurps the title and, greedy for Thomas' land, arranges for the innocent farmer to be arraigned on a trumped up charge, which leads to a sentence of transportation to New Holland. His wife faces a similar fate. The suffering on the voyage with the First Fleet is only the beginning of their troubles, for Silas Rainforde, not content with their disgrace and banishment, has sent killers to make sure that they can never return.

Flogged by those men and told he is about to die, Thomas dives overboard from a moving ship and attempts to escape, but falls foul of his pursuers and is horribly disfigures by fire. With the help of an aborigine friend he recovers and escapes into the outback, where he joins a band of aborigine women, whose men have died from the smallpox epidemic. Expecting to stay with them for the rest of his life he fathers a second family, but when two of his fellow ex-convicts come out aborigine hunting and attack the women he kills them and has the chance to change his destiny.

One of them is similar to him in build, and he takes on that man's identity and returns to England, where he exacts a long-planned, terrible vengeance.