![Hendersons Spear Best of Fiction 2001 The Toronto Star The National - photo 1](/uploads/posts/book/230691/images/Wrig_9780307371089_epub_cvi_r1.jpg)
Hendersons Spear
Best of Fiction 2001, The Toronto Star The National Bestseller
A complex, beautifully written novel. His previous novel, A Scientific Romance, won the prestigious David Higham Award and was a New York Times notable book. Now, his latest title seems bound for the same critical acclaim.
Victoria Times-Colonist
Richly imagined and crisply written. 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 illusions that enrich and deepen an already thoroughly engrossing tale of the South Pacific.
Publishers Weekly
The book is rich with romance and adventure, but so laced with complexities and realism that it never strays toward the sentimental. Wrights obsessive, passionate characters are intertwined completely through heartbreaking letters. These touching missives reveal surprises and confirm suspicions. They are the grand finale to an already unforgettable novel, meant to be read again and again in disbelief and understanding.
USA Today
Sometimes a novel hooks you in its opening pages and doesnt let go. Hendersons Spear is that kind of talebeautifully executed from start to finish.
Winnipeg Free Press
A fast-paced tale of travel, adventure, family (and royal) secrets, infused with a moral vision reminiscent of Joseph Conrad.
The Toronto Star
Wrights prose is both strong and lyrical, full of vivid, frequently beautiful imagery. An outstanding novel by any measure.
Booklist (starred review)
A page-turning adventure tale that grabs the Victorian notion of an Imperial boys adventure story and turns it on its masculine axle.
The Globe and Mail
Hendersons Spear is an intriguing, warm-toned, well-written and spirited novel, a credit to its tradition.
Times Literary Supplement
Combines history, adventure, romance, and mystery in one marvelous amalgam. Very highly recommended.
Library Journal (starred review)
Hendersons Spear serves history and fiction with equal aplomb, and they are blended as finely as one could wish. This is a thought-provoking and well-wrought novel whose characters and situations lodge in the mind.
Los Angeles Times
Mysteries abound in this well-crafted, leisurely paced novel. A thoroughly enjoyable tale of paternity, family secrets, adventure and human fallibility.
Seattle Times
A grand family saga, played out over several centuries, continents, and oceans. Well done indeed.
Kirkus Reviews
BOOKS BY RONALD WRIGHT
Fiction
Hendersons Spear
A Scientific Romance
History
Stolen Continents
Travel
Time Among the Maya On Fiji Islands
Cut Stones and Crossroads
Essays
Home and Away
![To the memory of my father AEA Wright 19141995 Keeper of the family - photo 2](/uploads/posts/book/230691/images/Wrig_9780307371089_epub_001_r1.jpg)
To the memory of my father
A.E.A. Wright
19141995
Keeper of the family stories
and the spear.
![Picture 4](/uploads/posts/book/230691/images/Wrig_9780307371089_epub_L02_r1.jpg)
One
TAHITI
Womens Prison, Arue. April, 1990
A NOTE IS ALL I HAVE FROM YOU . I think of it as yours despite the formal stationery and wary tone: We have recently been contacted by a young lady whose particulars appear to match your own. It found me here just before Christmasa few weeks after my arrest.
Id left my name with the contact agency several years ago, long enough to grow discouraged and then push discouragement to the back of my mind. So your note was a shock, though Id invited ita shock followed by relief and joy. You were alive! You wanted us to find each other. You werent hiding, werent exacting a sullen revenge that might last until I died.
Particulars. They mean dates, ages, numbers on certificates. These arent always reliable in our family, as I shall tell. But there can be no mistake; only your particulars could possibly appear to match my own. This young lady is you. And this older one is me, who gave you life at sixteen, and gave you away.
Who are you now? And how and what and where? Im brimming with questions. Im ready for the best, the worst, the in-between. Like most of us youre probably in between. And twenty-two is so damn young, but for the first time in your life youre feeling old. Youre thinking of endings and beginnings, which is why youve begun to look for me. But maybe you havent yet made up your mind youll even see me. So Ill go first: Olivia Wyvern, Cell 15. Your mother.
Theres this tiresome obstacle to our reunion: Im imprisoned on the far side of the world (assuming youre still in Britain). Its not a bad jail. How many have palm trees in the yard, French bread, an ocean view? And a good friend is moving heaven and earth to get me out of it. My governmentIm a Canadian nowis sympathetic. The consul here is on my side. Ottawa is asking questions about the charge, the so-called evidence. People are beginning to see that. been framed.
It cant be easy finding your mother after all these years, only to learn she stands accused of murderwell, for complice, which means accessory. But truly there was no murder. Or if there was it had nothing to do with me. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She would say that, wouldnt she? Will you allow me the presumption of innocence, which is more than Ive had from the Napoleonic Code? (Tahitis a French colony.) I am not guilty. But I do plead guilty to a charge concerning you: I threw away the life we might have lived together. No law sets penalties for that; it was a crime of the will and the heart. Both you the innocent and I the guilty have served over twenty years for it.
The people in London who matched our particulars have also offered advice on how to proceed. Phone calls out of the blue are not recommended. Start with a letter, they sayenclose photos, snippets of hair, take your time. Phone calls and meetings will come later. Phoning is difficult here, anyway, and a meeting out of the question. But I have plenty of time. So this is a long letter to prepare you for the next step, if and when.
Already Ive a lot to thank you for. Without your note I might still be stewing in the bath of outrage, fear, and hate in which I fell at my arrest. Youve kept me busy writing this since January. They let me spend four hours a day in the library. The lights good in the morning, a breeze comes through the bars, mynah birds squabble in the palms, and its the only room without a reek of sewer. This place is so French: good food, bad drains. The washbasin in my cell is a mixed blessingno plug or trap to keep down smells and cockroaches. Until Pua showed me the remedy (chewing gum and a coin), I thought I might be gassed in my sleep or nibbled raw. Tahitian roaches are as big as mice and they go for the dead skin on your feet.