The Trials of Minnie Dean by Karen Zelas

Description

A verse biography

Minnie Dean: the first – and only – woman to be hanged in New Zealand. Baby farmer and child murderer, or hardworking wife and mother, supporting her family by caring for unwanted children in a society that shunned her?

Karen Zelas explores the trials of Minnie Dean using a myriad of voices, including Dean’s own, from her childhood in Scotland to the gallows in Invercargill, 1895.

for bairns it is what
women do why god gave us
two arms: one to hold a child a-hip
t’other to stir the pot …