From Publishers Weekly
Richly imagined and crisply written, this second novel by Wright (A Scientific Romance) sails from England to Polynesia and back again, spanning a full century in its peregrinations. At its core is the memoir of one Frank Henderson, a young officer who accompanies Crown Prince Edward and his brother, George, on their round-the-world voyage in 1879. The trip comes to a climax in the Tahitian Islands, where Edward becomes involved in a homosexual relationship with an islander, who he brutally murders. Counterpointing this intriguing plot is a long and highly improbable epistle penned in 1990 by Olivia Wyvern, daughter of a British flyer declared MIA during the Korean conflict. Following her mother's death, Olivia discovers evidence that her father did not die, but rather wound up on Taiohae, the same island where Henderson's adventures brought him and where Herman Melville's earliest novel, Typee, is set. Obsessed with locating her father, Olivia travels to the South Seas, where in a series of misadventures of her own, she is imprisoned on trumped-up murder charges. While in prison, she receives an anonymous letter from a daughter she gave up for adoption when she was only 16, a child sired by a mysterious stranger claiming to have evidence of her father's whereabouts, and she begins writing to the daughter, relating all this from her cell. Binding these disparate stories together is a spear, ostensibly brought by Henderson from Africa, but actually a souvenir of his Polynesian adventures. 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 allusions that enrich and deepen an already thoroughly engrossing tale of the South Pacific. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This is clearly a family affair. Imprisoned in Tahiti, where she has gone to look for the father missing since the Korean War, Liv contemplates an ancestor who sailed the South Seas with Queen Victoria's grandsons. And she's writing a letter to the child she gave up at birth. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Canadian filmmaker Liv Wyvern travels to the South Seas in search of the father she hasn't seen in more than three decades. His fighter jet went down during the Korean War, but she has reason to believe he might have survived and taken refuge in the Marquesas. Liv is jailed in Tahiti on trumped-up murder charges and spends her time writing letters to the daughter she gave up for adoption; a daughter she's never seen. Liv also passes time reading the diary of a Victorian ancestor, Frank Henderson, whose Royal Navy voyages brought him to the South Seas. Henderson's diary, she believes, may offer some clue about her father's whereabouts. This multifaceted, compelling tale is much more complex than that, but its subtleties defy easy synopsis. Wright's characters are intelligent and every bit as complex as the plot, and his prose is both strong and lyrical, full of vivid, frequently beautiful imagery. The novel generates a mesmerizing sense of place, and it reflects the author's wonderfully peripatetic scholarship, which ranges from history to Victorian-era natural science to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. An outstanding novel by any measure. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Compelling...rich with romance and adventure, but so laced with complexities and realism that it never strays toward the sentimental. Unforgettable...meant to be read again and again.” —USA Today

“Henderson’s 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 and promise further satisfactions at a second reading.” —Los Angeles Times



Book Description
Olivia is writing from a Tahitian jail, piecing together her troubled past and her family’s buried history for the daughter she gave up for adoption years before. 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. In the stillness of her cell, Olivia ponders the meaning of the secret journals she discovered after her mother’s death. Their author is her ancestor Frank Henderson, a British naval officer who, as a young man, came to these same waters a hundred years before. What unfolds are twin tales of drama spanning the globe and history, reaching back through the murky waters of Olivia’s family line and culminating on the island where she is now held captive.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Olivia, a Canadian filmmaker, is writing from a Tahitian jail, piecing together her troubled past and her family's buried history for the daughter she gave up to adoption years before. 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, Olivia ponders the meaning of the secret journals she discovered after her mother's death. Their author is her ancestor Frank Henderson, a British naval officer who, as a young man, came to these same waters a hundred years before." The journals tell of his terrifying adventures in West Africa and an extraordinary three-year voyage to Polynesia with Queen Victoria's grandsons - Prince George (later George V) and his brother Prince Eddy, who would die young and disgraced. Frank's long-ago revelations, which included a fleeting love affair with a Polynesian girl, lead Olivia to understand her father's disappearance and her mother's strange attitude toward the past.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Spurling - Times Literary Supplement [London]

. . . Henderson's Spear is an intriguing,warm-toned,well-written and spirited novel,a credit to its tradition.

Len Gasparini - Toronto Star

Henderson's Spear [is] a Gauguin canvas and a volcanic tremor of a novel.

Publishers Weekly

Richly imagined and crisply written, this second novel by Wright (A Scientific Romance) sails from England to Polynesia and back again, spanning a full century in its peregrinations. At its core is the memoir of one Frank Henderson, a young officer who accompanies Crown Prince Edward and his brother, George, on their round-the-world voyage in 1879. The trip comes to a climax in the Tahitian Islands, where Edward becomes involved in a homosexual relationship with an islander, who he brutally murders. Counterpointing this intriguing plot is a long and highly improbable epistle penned in 1990 by Olivia Wyvern, daughter of a British flyer declared MIA during the Korean conflict. Following her mother's death, Olivia discovers evidence that her father did not die, but rather wound up on Taiohae, the same island where Henderson's adventures brought him and where Herman Melville's earliest novel, Typee, is set. Obsessed with locating her father, Olivia travels to the South Seas, where in a series of misadventures of her own, she is imprisoned on trumped-up murder charges. While in prison, she receives an anonymous letter from a daughter she gave up for adoption when she was only 16, a child sired by a mysterious stranger claiming to have evidence of her father's whereabouts, and she begins writing to the daughter, relating all this from her cell. Binding these disparate stories together is a spear, ostensibly brought by Henderson from Africa, but actually a souvenir of his Polynesian adventures. 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 allusions that enrich and deepen an already thoroughly engrossing tale of the South Pacific. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Wright's experience as a travel and history writer (Stolen Continents) is evident in his second novel, set in Africa, England, and the South Pacific. Liv, an English-born Canadian filmmaker and daughter of a pilot who went missing in the Korean War, is herself the mother of a daughter given up for adoption. When Liv finds herself in a Tahitian jail on trumped-up charges related to the death of a young woman, she decides to describe for her daughter her own search for the truth behind her father's disappearance and, as it turns out, the discovery of her true identity. Much of the story hinges on the secret journal of an ancestor, Frank Henderson, who as a young naval officer had accompanied Queen Victoria's grandsons on a voyage to the South Seas and whose spear hung on the wall at Liv's childhood home. The story combines history, adventure, romance, and mystery in one marvelous amalgam. It belongs on the shelves of even the smallest public libraries and might also serve to re-spark an interest in Melville's South Sea tales in academic settings. Very highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/01.] David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews