Henderson's Spear
By Ronald Wright
Holt, $25
ISBN 0805069968

Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller Find it in a WorldCat library Compare prices at major online bookstores

Send this review to a friend

A relic that spans time and space

From the graceful hands of a young woman in the South Seas to the cramped quarters of a loyal sailor in Her Majesty's services, a spear travels around the world. Spanning space and time, it survives as a familial relic hanging above the fireplace in Liv Wyvern's childhood home. The spear, hinting at exotic adventure and possible intrigue, remains out of Liv's reach until she is grown and her mother is dead.

Like the spear, the details of Liv's family history hang beyond her grasp for many years. In Henderson's Spear, when she begins to sort through the remains of her parents' existence, unexamined scraps of the past are discovered and a process of revelation begins.

Ronald Wright's second novel takes the form of letters and journals stretching across a century. From one chapter to the next, the narrative alternates between the viewpoints of Liv and her spear-toting ancestor Frank Henderson. The device is effective; unlike many books that employ a multi-voiced approach to storytelling, Wright's tale retains clarity while shifting perspectives.

His success is due in part to the connections between the tales of the 20th century documentary filmmaker Liv and her turn-of-the-last-century relative. The latter travels the seas in the company of misbehaving royals and revels in hedonistic island pursuits, before fleeing in the wake of a prince gone astray. More than 100 years later, Liv arrives in the South Seas seeking a lost father and finds herself an innocent accused of murder, locked up indefinitely in a Tahitian jail.

Wright skillfully portrays Liv's and Henderson's struggles to understand the present, past and future and their unavoidable effects on each other. In doing so, he weaves fiction from the historical threads of his own family and that of Britain's royals. Wright's attempts to unearth his own ancestral past led to the creation of this compelling fictional read, which entertains while encouraging explorations of the personal, historical and geographical.

Susanna Baird is a writer in Brookline, Massachusetts.