Henderson’s Spear: A Novel

2001

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 father, a pilot missing since the Korean War, has brought her to the Polynesian islands in 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 his elder brother, Prince Eddy, who would die young and disgraced.

Through unforgettable characters, a mesmerizing story, and a deep understanding of the landscape and culture of the South Seas, Henderson’s Spear explores the patterns of history and the accidents of love.

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Reviews

“An elegant novel… gripping and lyrical; you struggle to slow down but find yourself rushing forward.”
The New Yorker

“Vividly elegiac in style and enveloping in its mystery.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A compelling tale of history, mystery, and romance in the tradition of Melville, R.L. Stevenson [and] Conrad… Ronald Wright has written a Gauguin canvas and a volcanic tremor of a novel.”
Toronto Star

“A boldly imagined novel that revels in vivid description and a lean, muscular prose… A class act.”
Newsday

“Henderson’s Spear is an intriguing, warm-toned, well-written, and spirited novel, a credit to its tradition.”
Times Literary Supplement

“A taut fiction of tremendous beauty.”
Ottawa Citizen

Publishers in English: Henry Holt (USA); Knopf Canada; Doubleday (UK & Australia)
Foreign editions in French, German, Portuguese.