Secret Sparrow by Jackie French

Title: Secret Sparrow

Author: Jackie French

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 29^th November 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

Price:$17.99

Synopsis: This is the story of women who fought during WWI, but not as nurses or ambulance drivers.

In 1917 sixteen-year-old Jean McLain is working as a post-office assistant in England. But when she wins a national Morse code competition, the British army makes a request Jean cannot refuse – to take a secret position as a signaller in France.

If Jean can keep the signals flowing between headquarters and the soldiers at the Front, Britain might possibly win the war.

But the British army are determined to hide its desperation – and will go on to burn every document that showed how women and girls were working behind the scenes, in the trenches and even in battles during World War I.

Decades later, an old woman tells the story of ‘the telegraph girl’: the friends she lost, the man who loved her, and the happiness she so surprisingly found again.

Based on true events, this story of adventure, courage and unshakable loyalty restores women and girls to their place in history that the authorities tried to erase.

~*~

Burranong, 1978 – a young boy and an old woman are cut off from their society by a flood ravaging the valley they live nearby. Arjun, the young boy, is scared, running from the water when someone riding a motorbike arrives and saves him from the waves of water. Arjun is about sixteen, and his saviour, Mrs McLain, is in her seventies. She has seen two world wars, a pandemic, the Great Depression, and the Vietnam War in her time, as well as disasters like the sinking of the Titanic. And she has a story to tell while they wait. A forgotten story that nobody knows, that has been kept secret for decades – the story of the telegraph girl from the frontlines of World War I, and the love she found there, and the secrets she has had to keep.

Jackie French’s books are often inspired by history and the stories and voices that have never been heard or been forgotten. The ones that have been erased or underrepresented. She often centres women in her stories. In Secret Sparrow, she tells the story of the female coders and telegraph girls through a fictional character, though the stories behind Jean are true. These were roles that were secret – nobody except the girls working the telegraph machines and the people they worked with knew. Jackie started thinking about this book when she found out about a query in the British parliament from the 1920s about the women who had served in World War I, and been injured not receiving a pension, which led to her discovery of a lack of records – which led to a decade of research that finally led her to poems by women from wartime France, which then led to notes and letters, but nothing concrete. Finally, a paper by an Irish historian about British post office female staff working in Army signal units triggered something.

Once she was able to access the paper, as well as stories and archives from the paper’s author, Barbara Walsh, Jackie uncovered a fascinating story that had been erased from the historical record. The research focused on the Irish Postal Workers Union, who had ignored the British order to destroy the records. And that’s where Jean’s story was born – the story of an English girl who became a telegraph coder based on what information she could access – the historical fact is always brough together with fiction and works seamlessly to tell this story that many people will not know about or know a lot about. The secrecy is echoed throughout, as the story goes between 1917 and 1978, with Jean telling her story to Arjun as it plays out in the text. We see Jean’s experiences of sexism play out as she works to prove herself and show she is just as capable.

Jean’s story is effective and meaningful because it gives these women a voice and shows that the war had many nuances and experiences and that everyone involved came out of it with different injuries – if they survived, and highlighted that during those times, it wasn’t as easy to get messages to armies or generals. Things got lost in translation, and it revealed that there were different attitudes and understandings that people dealt with because that was how they saw things at the time. It highlighted that there are many stories that give what we know about World War I greater depth and a better range of knowledge compared to what is commonly known. Knowing this range of stories can help broaden our historical understanding and show how diverse the battlefield was.

The story is seen through Jean’s eyes, and everything she sees, hears, and feels, we also see, hear, and feel as the reader, taking us into Jean’s story and experiences, and we can feel and smell everything she does. This use of senses helps make the story genuine and effective, something that I have noticed in everything I have read that Jackie has written, and I feel as though she has brought history to life in so many ways for readers with her vivid characters and extensive research that forms the basis of her stories, sparking interest and highlighting events and people that are not often or have been ignored throughout history.

I have loved Jackie’s stories for over twenty years – since I started high school. I think that’s because she looks at history from a different angle, through the eyes of women, and how history has impacted them – whether fighting in a war, at home waiting, in a prisoner of war camp, and everything in between across the spectrum of Australian history, in particular, the 19^th – 20^th centuries in Australia, based on all the ones I have read, though she does have other books that retell Shakespeare and explore a diverse range of characters and themes. Her books do not shy away from the realities of war – battlefields, the home front, prisoner of war camps, and everything in between. Her books show this harsh reality because they are things that people need to know and remember – and they work to remind us that the ravages of war had a larger impact than just the front lines and battlefields. Her books are also filled with hope – she manages to explore every emotion in her books, and I think this is what makes them work so well. Secret Sparrow is filled with bravery and uncertainty, but also hope – and I think it has a very fitting finale that brings everything in the book together.

Another fantastic Jackie French book.