The Last Tiger — Tony Black

A Tasmanian-set tale about a family of Lithuanian immigrants and the secrets they bring with them to Van Dieman's Land

It's 1910 and 12-year-old Myko and his family have fled the Czarist occupation of their native Lithuania for the freedom of America -- only to discover their ship has arrived in Tasmania, the once notorious prison island of the British Empire, known as Van Diemen's Land. Myko wonders what will become of them as he watches his father, Petras, and mother, Daina, become anxious about how they will survive in this new land where tigers roam. Myko has never seen a tiger before, except in his picture books, and is filled with fear as stories of the tigers' vicious attacks upon the island's settlers are retold to him. He wishes his brother Jurgis was with him, but knows his sibling's disappearance is something he should force out of his mind. But when Petras takes work as a tiger trapper and Myko discovers the den of the last tigers, the family are thrust into a fight over the last of these beautiful, wild beasts that will force dark secrets to the surface, and pit son against father.