By Emily Gale and Nova Weetman
Publisher: Text Publishing, 2024
Publisher’s blurb
Kate and Ruby live in the High Country in Victoria. They’re both daring, quick-thinking and prepared to break the rules, and they’re both brilliant horse riders—they’d probably be great friends. But they live in different times, more than 140 years apart.
While galloping through the mountains, Kate rides headlong into a thrilling experience that transports her from 1878 to the future, where she meets Ruby. Kate and Ruby return to 1878, where Kate is secretly taking supplies to her brother Ned and the rest of the Kelly Gang, who are in hiding from the police. Together the girls work to confuse the police and keep the gang from being found and arrested. But the looming disaster makes things less clear-cut for Ruby.
They’re about to have the ride of their lives!
Outlaw Girls is an exciting, fast-paced time-slip novel, narrated by both Ruby and Kate, about family, friendship, loyalty and betrayal, the complexity of right and wrong, and working out what matters most.
Review
by Liz Filleul
Ruby and Kate have three things in common – they both live in Victoria’s high country, they’ve both got on the wrong side of the law, and they share a love of horses. But they live 144 years apart.
That all changes when Kate accidentally falls through a time portal and finds herself in 2022. There, she meets Ruby, who’s been sent to live with her aunt and uncle after falling in with the wrong crowd at school and getting in trouble with the police. Kate briefly enjoys pasta and lollies and 21st century comforts before returning to the portal with Ruby – and this time, both girls are carried through time by ‘time horses’.
Now, it’s Ruby’s turn for culture shock, as she finds herself sleeping in a hut with Kate’s family, eating eels and hard biscuits, and using her riding skills to help Kate lure the police away from where her brothers Ned and Joe are in hiding. When she realises that Kate is the sister of bushranger Ned Kelly, Ruby struggles with wanting to help her new friend, while at the same time knowing that Ned ends up hanged. She decides to help but finds herself missing her own home.
Outlaw Girls is a rollicking adventure that will be enjoyed by middle-grade readers as well as those at the younger end of the young adult market. The 1878 scenes offer real insight into how people lived without it ever feeling like a history lesson. Similarly, readers will learn a great deal about the Kelly Gang, and the Kelly sisters’ roles in helping their fugitive brothers, through a pacy, exciting narrative. The concept of ‘time horses’ taking Kate and Ruby through the portal is a clever one and will definitely appeal to young readers who love horses. Outlaw Girls is the second collaboration between these two authors – the first book, Elsewhere Girls, introduces today’s readers to 1912 Olympic champion Fanny Durack through a similar adventure – and hopefully there will be more to come, to help shed light on courageous Australian girls whose place in history has been overshadowed.