Exiles

In December 1875 the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, Germany, bound for America. On board were five nuns, exiled by a government ban on religious orders, hoping to begin their lives anew in Missouri. Their journey would end when the Deutschland ran aground at the mouth of the Thames and all five drowned. Ron Hansen tells their harrowing story, but also that of the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, and how the shipwreck moved him to write a grand poem, a revelatory work read throughout the world today.