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In 1830, a British Admiralty ship at anchor off the bleak coast of Patagonia has one of its landing boats stolen by the native Indians. In reprisal, the young Captain takes four aboriginal teenagers hostage - three boys and a girl, and brings them back to England, to convert them to Christianity. He plans to return them in three years in order to set up a trading station, and names the girl Fuegia Basket, and the three boys York Minster, Jemmy Button, and Boat Memory, for the lost canoe. Boat Memory dies of smallpox on arrival in England, but the others go to the very first Church of England parish school, in the sleepy, smart little village of Walthamstow, where their education begin. Fuegia, Jemmy and York adapt so well, that within nine months they are presented at the court of St James - what triumph! But the community of Walthamstow finds itself as affected by the three powerful young strangers, as they do by their alien environment.

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Author: Laline Paull