Henderson's Spear

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

 

Review: Liv, a Canadian filmmaker, is writing to the daughter she gave up for adoption years before from her jail cell in Tahiti. Liv tells her daughter her life story, growing up in England, surrounded by the historical artifacts of her father's ancestor, Frank Henderson, brought back from his travels in Africa. Liv's father disappeared in the Korean War and is presumed dead. But after Liv's mother's death, she discovers evidence that leads her suspect that her father (or is he?) didn't actually die during the war, and sets off to try to uncover the mystery behind his disappearance and her parentage. Liv intersperses her narrative by sharing excerpts from Frank Henderson's private journals as he travels with Queen Victoria's grandsons. It is Liv's search that both gives her answers and lands her in a jail cell (for a crime she didn't commit).

 

As can be gleaned from the careening plot summary, this novel was fairly convoluted and involved. I wasn't sure where the author was going with the narrative for quite some time. Turns out Frank Henderson, who wasn't technically a blood relative, is in fact a blood relative when Liv discovers the truth of her parentage. And it turns out Frank Henderson's journals reveal secrets about Queen Victoria's grandsons that he didn't want the world to know. As a reader, I felt like there was too much going on in this. It was difficult to keep track of each of the separate stories, many of which could have been a standalone novel. There felt like a lot of loose ends - what happened to the man who fathered Liv's baby? Why did Liv's mother have an affair? How did Liv's mother meet Henderson's descendant? Who was the dead girl Liv and her companions found in the ocean? Does Liv ever meet her daughter?

 

Additionally, I found some of the writing obnoxious. For example, Liv's description from within prison of her cellmates: "Spends long hours practicing the ukulele. This morning I uttered a threat to fill it with concrete" (247). At other time the writing seemed unnecessarily overwrought: "A cutlass - it seemed the kind used for cutting sugarcane - had been plunged into his fundament" (286). So in other words, he had been stabbed in the butt. I suppose Henderson is trying to be decorous, but it still made me roll my eyes.

 

I do appreciate that this novel was based on the life of the author's cousin, Francis Barkley Henderson, who was born in 1859 and who was captured by the Sofas in 1897. After a promising beginning, the plot of the narrative grew too confused and far-fetched to hold my interest.

 

Stars: 2