Son of Hydra: A Historical Novel of Love, Exile, Redemption, and Australia’s First Greek Convict (The Hydra Collection)

He had everything — power, privilege, a future. One reckless decision cost him his name, his freedom, and everything he thought defined a man.

Sydney, 1829.
Ghikas Voulgaris was born to command — the proud son of a powerful Greek shipping family, raised to believe the world would bend to his will.

When he and his friends attack a ship supplying the enemy during the Greek War of Independence, it sets off a chain of consequences he can’t outrun. His punishment is swift and public: exile to the raw penal colony of New South Wales, half a world away from his island home, stripped of name and status.

In Australia, the man who once dreamed of captaining his own fleet now tends another man’s sheep and takes orders like a servant. His fellow workers don’t care who he was. And Mary — a fierce Irish orphan who will bow to no man — is everything he doesn’t want in a woman, and the one person who can see who he might become.

Ghikas believes he’ll survive his sentence, return home, and reclaim his birthright.
But the real fight is just beginning, not against iron chains, but against himself.

Inspired by a true story, Son of Hydra is a sweeping tale of love and loss, blending Greek and Australian history into a powerful work of fiction that explores pride, punishment, and what is truly the measure of a man.