Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on a true story and is a personal account of an Indigenous Australian family's experiences as members of the "Stolen Generation" – the forced removal of mixed-race children from their families during the early 20th century. Following an Australian government edict in 1931, black aboriginal children and children of mixed marriages were gathered up and taken to settlements to be institutionally assimilated. The book tells the story of Molly Craig, a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl, who is deemed "half-caste" by the Australian government. Along with two members of her family, her 8-year-old sister Daisy Craig and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie Fields, Molly is taken by police officers from her mother in the community of Jigalong and transported 1,600 kilometres to the Moore River Native Settlement. The girls escape with the intention to walk home, barefoot - without provisions or maps, escaping from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment; they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north; tracked by Native Police and search planes, they hide in terror, desperate to return to the world they knew.
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