This is a story of freedom, risk, and unspoken truths; a time before and after the American Civil War and the eradication of the Aboriginal people in Van Diemen’s Land (today’s Tasmania). Out of the Rabbit Hutch unites the power and drama of two distant countries and two generations. Populated by socialites, opium users, slave hunters, and war heroes, the novel chronicles the remarkable tale of a Civil War veteran, Asa Young. Unable to speak and still seemingly broken from the war, he is released from a mental asylum and entrusted into the home of a family tainted by secrets and deceit. On the other side of the world, the devastating effect of Britain’s brutal colonization of Van Diemen’s Land remains an undercurrent of inward struggles portrayed through flashbacks and revelations. Mallabal, a free Aborigine, journeys from this British claimed penal colony to America. His chance meeting with the ambitious Sydney Bushnell, who uses her feminine charm to defy the social restrictions placed upon women, embroils him in a forbidden relationship and a struggle for self-preservation.