Author(s): Cristina Sanders

NZ Fiction | Staff Picks- Read our reviews

It’s 1866 and the three-masted sailing ship General Grant is on the southern route from Melbourne to London, with gold from the diggings secreted in returning miners’ hems and pockets. In the fog and the dark, the ship strikes the cliffs of the Auckland Islands, is sucked into a cave and wrecked. Only fourteen men make it ashore and one woman – Mrs Jewell.

Stuck on a freezing and exposed island, the castaways have to work together to stay alive, but they’re a disparate group with their own secrets to keep and their only officer is disabled by grief after losing his wife in the wreck. A woman is a burden they don’t need. Meanwhile stories about the gold grow with the telling: who has it, where is it and how much went down with the ship.

From the author of the bestselling Jerningham, Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant is a vivid imagining of the story behind the enduring mystery of one of New Zealand’s early shipwrecks.  

Reviewed by Randi

The following review should be studied with a healthy dose of skepticism, especially by anyone looking for a comforting read. My taste in literature trends darker; my tolerance for hardship and suffering in narratives is rather high. I enjoy circumstances in fiction that most people would safely describe as "wretched". Be warned.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I'm free to recommend this book as much as I'm inclined to, which is with a high degree of enthusiasm. Cristina Sanders has clearly done her homework, as her knowledge of the time period shows through in all the little ways that make the experience so much more authentic than it might have otherwise been if handled by another writer. She takes care in describing all aspects of the story, including the grittier, and yes, more bleak moments that come together to layer into something incredibly immersive. I really felt like I was one of the shipwrecked along with Mrs. Jewell, mostly against my will, as the living conditions described were nothing short of horrific.
What I found most impressive about it all, however, was the poetic grace of the prose itself. The events unfold as they might really have done, but the word-choice is careful to leave room for beauty in an otherwise harsh and ugly retelling of this tragic, historic event.