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Henderson's Spear: A Novel, by Ronald Wright
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A masterly epic that weaves a contemporary search for a missing father with a vivid story from the heyday of the British Empire.
Liv, a Canadian filmmaker, is writing from a Tahitian jail, piecing together her troubled past and her family's buried history for the unknown daughter she gave up at birth. The search for her own father, a pilot missing since the Korean War, has brought her to the South Seas and landed her behind bars on a trumped-up murder charge. In the stillness of her cell, Liv ponders the secret journal of her ancestor Frank Henderson, who came to these same waters a century before on an extraordinary three-year voyage with Queen Victoria's grandsons-Prince George (later George V) and Prince Eddy, who would die young and disgraced, linked by the gutter press to the Ripper killings and many other scandals.
Through unforgettable characters and a mesmerizing story, Henderson's Spear traces two tales of obsession, intrigue, and loss-from the 1890s and the 1990s. These stories reach around the world from Africa, England, and North America to converge with compelling effect in the Polynesian islands.
With a deep understanding of the landscape and culture of the South Sea Islands, Henderson's Spear explores the patterns of history and the accidents of love.
- Sales Rank: #3944719 in Books
- Published on: 2002-03-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.64" h x 1.19" w x 6.36" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Richly imagined and crisply written, this second novel by Wright (A Scientific Romance) sails from England to Polynesia and back again, spanning a full century in its peregrinations. At its core is the memoir of one Frank Henderson, a young officer who accompanies Crown Prince Edward and his brother, George, on their round-the-world voyage in 1879. The trip comes to a climax in the Tahitian Islands, where Edward becomes involved in a homosexual relationship with an islander, who he brutally murders. Counterpointing this intriguing plot is a long and highly improbable epistle penned in 1990 by Olivia Wyvern, daughter of a British flyer declared MIA during the Korean conflict. Following her mother's death, Olivia discovers evidence that her father did not die, but rather wound up on Taiohae, the same island where Henderson's adventures brought him and where Herman Melville's earliest novel, Typee, is set. Obsessed with locating her father, Olivia travels to the South Seas, where in a series of misadventures of her own, she is imprisoned on trumped-up murder charges. While in prison, she receives an anonymous letter from a daughter she gave up for adoption when she was only 16, a child sired by a mysterious stranger claiming to have evidence of her father's whereabouts, and she begins writing to the daughter, relating all this from her cell. Binding these disparate stories together is a spear, ostensibly brought by Henderson from Africa, but actually a souvenir of his Polynesian adventures. Romantic but unsentimental, this is a beautifully constructed story with fascinating characters and authentic details that play off one another in surprising and often shocking ways. The thematic homage to Melville is punctuated with other literary allusions that enrich and deepen an already thoroughly engrossing tale of the South Pacific.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This is clearly a family affair. Imprisoned in Tahiti, where she has gone to look for the father missing since the Korean War, Liv contemplates an ancestor who sailed the South Seas with Queen Victoria's grandsons. And she's writing a letter to the child she gave up at birth.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Canadian filmmaker Liv Wyvern travels to the South Seas in search of the father she hasn't seen in more than three decades. His fighter jet went down during the Korean War, but she has reason to believe he might have survived and taken refuge in the Marquesas. Liv is jailed in Tahiti on trumped-up murder charges and spends her time writing letters to the daughter she gave up for adoption; a daughter she's never seen. Liv also passes time reading the diary of a Victorian ancestor, Frank Henderson, whose Royal Navy voyages brought him to the South Seas. Henderson's diary, she believes, may offer some clue about her father's whereabouts. This multifaceted, compelling tale is much more complex than that, but its subtleties defy easy synopsis. Wright's characters are intelligent and every bit as complex as the plot, and his prose is both strong and lyrical, full of vivid, frequently beautiful imagery. The novel generates a mesmerizing sense of place, and it reflects the author's wonderfully peripatetic scholarship, which ranges from history to Victorian-era natural science to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. An outstanding novel by any measure. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
a ripping good yarn!
By Rebecca Brown
A Canadian filmaker writes from a Tahitian jail to her unknown daughter she gave up at birth, of her troubled past & her family's buried history. In the search for her father, a pilot missing since the Korean War, Liv travels to Polynesia his last known whereabouts, & winds up behind bars on a trumped-up murder charge.
It is that long-forgotten child's note, received while in jail, that brings up Liv's childhood memories. HENDERSON'S SPEAR is a love letter from a woman who never thought of herself as a mother, to her now 20 year old daughter.
Ronald Wright tells of the history of the end of the Korean War & the French & American atomic bomb testing on the atolls of that vast ocean. He keenly describes the affects of the fallout, the use of pilots to photograph the explosions, & the islanders' memories of being guinea pigs; uncovering an era we would all rather forget - what hell we brought to paradise!...
This novel is like a treasure chest found on a desert island, in which you will uncover all sorts of histories; Herman Melville's meanderings before he wrote MOBY DICK; South Sea Island cultures - past & present; how Darwin's theory of evolution affected his contemporaries; how Queen Victoria's grandsons were groomed for public life; how one man's memories of a life in the service of his country affects another's two generations later & so much more!
Normally such yarns have a male protagonist & this one is refreshing & unusual as the Reader listens to what a woman has to say about the affairs of the heart & our ancestors. Ronald Wright has woven out of the threads of history, a compelling story of the ghosts people carry with them. HENDERSON'S SPEAR is a tapestry of depth & intrigue, affection & redemption.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Entertaining.
By Mary Whipple
In this consummately romantic double narrative, the reader discovers in the first hundred words (!) that the speaker is Olivia Wyvern, a 38-year-old woman falsely accused of murder and in prison in Arue, "on the far side of the world," that she has been contacted by the child she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen, and that she is writing a letter to this child.
Within the first ten pages, Wright efficiently involves the reader in further details of Olivia's life, as she muses over the death of her mother "over a parrot" and reminisces about the old house in which the family has lived for 200 years, a house loaded with documents, letters, and artifacts, including a strange, 14' long ebony spear, supposedly an assegai from Africa. We find out that Olivia's mother was disowned, that she never revealed information about her family background, and that Olivia's father was declared missing in Korea. In a locked box Olivia has found five notebooks written by Frank Henderson, a former owner of the house, an adventurer who traveled around the world for three years in the late 1800's with Crown Prince Eddy and Prince George.
As Olivia Wyvern, through her letter to her daughter, and Frank Henderson, through his newly discovered journals, tell their stories in alternate chapters, the reader learns how Olivia, a film maker, came to be imprisoned in Tahiti and of her search for her father and her family history. We learn about Henderson's travels with the teenage princes through Africa in the 1880's, their search for identity, their sexual curiosity, and their mysterious three-week stop in Tahiti.
Wright pulls out all the stops in this novel, using every romantic element imaginable to pique the reader's curiosity and involve his/her emotions. He also includes, however, historical background which gives this novel more depth than some other romances. In Olivia's story, the aftereffects of French colonialism in the Pacific, along with France's A-bomb tests in Polynesia, are included, and Lars Lindquist, an adventurer who sailed on the Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl, is a character. Melville's novel Typee, set in Tahiti, is discussed at some length. In the Henderson story, discussions of Darwin, native opposition to French colonialism, the "secret" story of Prince Eddy, and traditional customs of the local Polynesians are included. With good description and unique imagery, this entertaining, plot-driven novel offers several hours of total escape for those seeking it. Mary Whipple
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
In the same league as THE KITE RUNNER and CAPTAIN CORELLI
By David Gee
This literary adventure story was published in 2001 but only came to my attention this year, recommended by a friend with reliable good taste.
Two narratives are interwoven in HENDERSON'S SPEAR, told in different styles, both vividly fresh and exciting. The modern one has Olivia, a rootless young woman imprisoned in Tahiti on a murder charge, writing her life story in the form of a letter to the daughter she gave up for adoption. The ‘period’ story, 100 years earlier, is the journal of a relative of Olivia’s, Frank Henderson, who sailed the South Seas with a crew that included Princes George and Edward, Queen Victoria’s grandsons, one destined to die young, the other to marry his brother’s fiancée and be crowned in Westminster Abbey.
The Victorian/Edwardian history is very much in the style of Herman Melville who also explored – and wrote about – Polynesia. There are storms at sea and other maritime perils and wonderfully weird encounters with the newly Christianized rulers of Fiji and Tahiti. Prince Eddy’s homosexuality is not over-emphasized, although this tale has a ‘shock’ ending. Olivia’s life is a catalogue of doomed affairs: ‘I’ve never been very good at love,’ she writes to her daughter, ‘though I am working on it.’ Her ill-fated trip to Tahiti, also driven by letters, is a quest to find out what happened to her father, a pilot who failed to return from the Korean War. Abandonment is a core theme in this novel, explored with depth and poignancy.
HENDERSON'S SPEAR is in the same league as CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN or THE KITE RUNNER – novels that are impossible to categorize and a joy to read.
[Reviewer is the author of SHAIKH-DOWN]
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