Marion and the Forty Thieves by Sarah Luke

Title: Marion and the Forty Thieves

Author: Sarah Luke

Genre: Faction, Historical Fiction

Publisher: NLA Publishing

Published: 1^st July 2024

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 208

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Marion’s life is anything but ordinary. The daughter of the principal, Captain Neitenstein, she is the only girl aboard a magnificent floating boys’ school, anchored permanently in Sydney Harbour in the late 1800s. Her best friend has boarded a steamship to France and now it’s just her and this ship full of ragtag schoolboys. One night, Marion discovers that a new student, Alexander Walker, is escaping the ship to meet up with his vicious gang, the Forty Thieves. Marion bravely follows Walker into the frightening Rocks neighbourhood to investigate …What are the Forty Thieves up to and will Marion be able to stop them before it’s too late?

Based on the real-life Marion Neitenstein, this middle-grade ‘faction’, which offers an immersive and historically accurate experience of an unusual nineteenth-century institution for neglected boys. Marion’s middle-class life is contrasted with Sydney slum life and wharf culture. Other important real characters appear, including businessman Quong Tart and the head of the Forty Thieves gang Joseph Bragg.

The author used primary sources to research the story, such as old gaol inmate records and even Quong Tart’s original menus, and delves into these sources at the back of the book, covering topics such as the nautical school-ships Vernon and Sobraon and their captains, the Rocks, Quong Tart and more. The text is accompanied by real photographs from the ship, portraits of 3 Sobraon boys from the admissions book and images of Sydney street scene from the period.

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Marion Neitenstein is the daughter of the principal of a floating boys’ school, the Sobraon, anchored in the harbour near Cockatoo Island. Her father is Captain Neitenstein, and the school is filled with boys in sailor suits, plucked from the streets to learn and be apprenticed out to work across the colony of NSW instead of running with a major street gang called the Forty Thieves, run by the notorious Joseph Bragg.

The story Sarah Luke has told kicks off when Marion’s best friend has just set sail for Europe and a new student, Alexander Walker, has just arrived, and is determined to keep to himself and away from the other boys. Yet Marion can sense there is more to Alexander Walker, who keeps disappearing from the ship. And a woman named Crosscapel has shown up, seeking her son who has been missing for five years. As Marion uncovers the truth about where Alexander is going, she may find out that there is more to his story than meets the eye when he has first arrived.

Sarah Luke’s book is based on fact, telling the story of Bragg and his gang, and a young girl who encounters them amidst a world of slum life versus the middle class, the nautical life that some people led, and key figures in the history of Sydney and in particular, The Rocks such as Quong Tart, who ran a tearoom and other businesses during the nineteenth century. Sarah Luke has recreated this world of wharves and gangs, neglect and thievery from old gaol records, photographs and portraits, and exhaustive research about the nautical schools of these times. She puts it into an exciting narrative form to explore what happened during Marion’s experience with Bragg and the Forty Thieves, bringing it to life in an action-packed book for middle grade readers. It is filled with adventure and friendship as Marion learns how to get along with the boys during her time alone, waiting to attend a new school. She’s able to connect with them through offers of help, sharing knowledge and doing her best to understand where these boys have come from. It examines the stark differences in their experiences and what they knew and understood from life.

It seems like a simple plot at first, yet there are layers of intrigue – the boys who keep coming back, the whispers that one of the boys on the ship is someone else, and the stirrings and uncertainty of who Marion can trust ensure that things are not as simple as they seem at first. This allows the characters to explore their world, wanting to know more – some of the boys are determined to make something of themselves and graduate or achieve an apprenticeship, whilst Marion wants a friend – and turns to some of the boys for companionship, resulting in an unlikely alliance that informs the later events in the book, where the drama picks up and drives the narrative as mysteries evolve and are solved, where secrets come out and lives are in danger. It’s an exciting story that captures a part of history through the lens and perspective of a young woman as she encounters the world and things that society would have seen as inappropriate for her. It is these experiences that shape the story and Marion as a character in the book and a person in real life, creating a sense of immersion within the history of The Rocks and Sydney, and allowing the entirety of the world – the range of classes, the stark differences and its diversity to be shown for younger readers who will engage with these things at various levels. This is a great book to read for fun, but it’s filled with familiar places like Argyle Street and Circular Quay – places we all know today and that have been part of Sydney as we have known it for centuries. It gives readers an insight into what these streets filled with old buildings would have been like 150 years ago, patches of which you can still see if you explore The Rocks – history is written throughout it in many ways.

Marion and the Forty Thieves is a fascinating book that will be an exciting addition to a good history shelf.