The Sea Captain’s Wife by Jackie French

Title: The Sea Captain’s Wife

Author: Jackie French

Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 6^th March 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 480

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: From bestselling author Jackie French comes a compelling story of murder, mystery, and mutiny on the high seas – and a love so intense it can overcome two different cultures.

You never know what the sea will give you … or what it will take back.

When Mair McCrae follows her island tradition and hunts for a husband cast up on the beach, she has no notion that the naked, half-drowned man she rescues is not just Captain Michael Dawson, heir to a major shipping firm, but that he’s obsessed by a ‘ghost ship’ carrying golden cargo.

On Big Henry Island women make the decisions and knit the patterns that mark a man as their own. But Big Henry is also a volcano, and threatening to erupt. Yet when Mair agrees to accompany Michael home, she finds that the Australian comfort he promised has a danger just as real: a social system that tries to keep women confined to small roles at the edges of men’s lives.

And as Michael hunts for the ‘Ghost’ in his revolutionary new steamship, a string of mysterious deaths upends Mair’s new life in Sydney.

Who is the murderer, and why is Mair the only one who realises what is happening?

~*~

Jackie French is best known for her historical fiction that explores major historical events or moments through the eyes of women, from colonial times to the mid-20^th century, battles and wars that raged across Europe and enveloped the whole world, or the interwar periods and explorations of how women have been treated throughout history. She has used a diverse range of characters from different classes, races, and characters who have disabilities to highlight the ways they were discriminated against, the adversity they faced and what they did to push back against this. Her latest book, The Sea Captain’s Wife continues the tradition of women finding their place in a man’s world and showing that they are just as capable as men in ways that suit the character and story. It also has a murder mystery at its centre, and an idyllic island of women in a community where they do not wait for men or do what me demand. And this is what makes her latest novel different to her previous ones.

The Sea Captain’s Wife draws from a rebuttal that Jackie wrote at school to Lord of the Flies, where she argued and portrayed the lost children as building a collaborative and equal community – without resorting to the cannibalism of the original story. Her world is an island called Big Henry Island, whose inhabitants are descended from white people, slaves, whores, and a diverse range of people from all around the world who came together to create the shared community and survive together. They have traditions – women knit socks in their family pattern (like a tartan tradition that would have come over with Scots people) and hunt for husbands on the beach – known as beachies. Everyone contributes, they live under a volcano and use what the island gives them. She has created a diverse and idyllic island that is amazing and dangerous – and I enjoyed seeing how she had created this and what it had come from, and gives people a way to think about how they can build a community from nothing.

In 1870, we meet Mair Rodrigues Lestrange McCrae as she walks up and down the beach of Big Henry Island searching for a husband following a tragedy that took all the men of the island. Here, she rescues Michael Dawson, lost from his family ship, and determined to get home and find the gold on a ship called Ghost. As Mair cares for him and knits him socks in the McCrae pattern, marking him as her husband-to-be, but Michael wants to go home. Home to Australia, where men make the decisions and women do as they say or fill certain roles in society based on rank and class – something that the women of Big Henry Island do not understand.

Yet Mair agrees to go to Sydney and see this comfort that Michael has promised – a comfort free from danger from a volcano. A comfort where she will not have to make her own clothes or rely on the island’s generosity for food and crops to work. This comfort is dangerous though with a social system where women are confined to smaller roles at the peripheral of the lives of men – something that Michael doesn’t quite see as an issue, yet helps Mair understand. When tragedy strikes, Mair becomes close with Michael’s mother and grandmother who do their best to show her how things work, and let her bring some of her island recipes and food into the house –something that unites the women in shared grief. And Mair continues to be troubled by the strange goings on, and the oddity of Michael’s cousin, Cuthbert. This novel examined trust and deception – I always felt unsettled by one of the characters, because seeing how some of the things played out always felt like they were out of place.

And so, the story is set up to be a mystery and journey of discovery and acceptance in the early 1870s as a family patches themselves together with people who seem like they won’t get along. And this is what I felt Jackie French has done well here – pulled people who in ordinary circumstances may not get on, but in these extraordinary circumstances, they find ways to understand each other and work together. I liked that this was a story powered by women, who each had their own talents and ways of doing things, their own secrets and pasts that made them who they were. As everyone tries to deny what is happening, it is Mair who makes sure that the strange deaths are not ignored, even if she cannot tell anyone – she had a strength and determination that showed she would do anything to protect her family – whether on the island or in Sydney. She is loyal and creative, willing to try things, willing to help, and does her best to fit in without compromising everything she grew up with. Everything in this book was magical and mysterious, where the sea can give and take, the mercilessness of nature, and the obsessions of men like Michael – and how far it will take them from home until they find what they are seeking – whatever the risk.

Reading this book was like opening a window in a world that is both idyllic and dangerous, where the worlds of Big Henry Island are shown in these ways, and where the stark differences highlight the different ways society has developed. It is powerful because it allows both these worlds to coexist, acknowledges the fears and worries of both societies – and I felt that each society was a different side of the same coin, and if they had been able to unite and take the best of both worlds in the same place, without needing to change, it would have made the world a better place – if there was any reality to this. Overall, it was a fantastically written novel, where an island far from Australia, based on the explosion of Vesuvius and New Zealand’s White Island lives in its own world with its own traditions that have amalgamated from all the cultures that have become part of that island. I found this to be a wonderful concept, and loved the way Mair navigated and understood her world. Jackie has yet again created a world where women are heard but still find ways to fit into the male-driven society that they are part of in an enthralling and engaging story. Another fantastic Jackie French book.