Van Diemen's Land, 1839. Widow Caroline Douglas arrives in Hobart, with her ward a young boy called Quinn. Caroline leases an old cottage from Mr. Swanston and it has an abandoned vineyard, but how did she end up in the colony full of convicts and including one’s who have earned their ticket of leave.

Caroline has secrets, and the narrative takes you back to divulge all the things that happened to her prior to arriving in Van Diemen’s Land or as we know it Tasmania.

The daughter of Hannah and Jacques Louis Colbert, he fled revolutionary France with his sister Henriette, you’re taken on a literary journey from Scotland, to London and colonial Australia. Jacques was an apothecary and chemist, his family originated from Champagne, a tale of lost legacies, tragedy, survival and how to reinvent yourself and start over again.

I received a copy of A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose from NetGalley and Allen & Unwin in exchange for an honest review. Based on true events, Charles Swanston was a prominent figure in Hobart, he was a merchant, politician, investor in the Derwent Bank and owned an old cottage and vineyard that once belonged to an English man called Bartholomew Broughton.

Ms Rose narrative combines fact with fiction, a story about a father and daughter and how Caroline ended up in Van Diemen’s Land and the obstacles and challenges she overcame and faced.

I really liked the following characters, Caroline and Quill, blacksmith and escaped slave Cornelius, Bessie an ex-convict and Georgina Swanston and Doctor John Mercer.

I can see why Heather Rose is a leader and award winning Australian writer of gutsy historical fiction, this is the first novel I have read by her and it won’t be my last and four and a half stars from me. Shared throughout the book is prose from classics and I enjoyed this and it added to the gothic feel.

I love this author and her books never disappoint. An exquisite novel of adventure, relationships and wine making from England to Tasmania and beyond. Gripping and detailed in its depiction of human relationships. Loved it. Thank you to the author. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

A Great Act of Love is Heather Rose’s latest release and her first historical fiction. It’s a sweeping family saga spanning generations and continents and is as rich in historical detail as it is in beauty.

‘Do your dreams live on? she wonders. If you lay them down, if you discard them, can they jump into the pocket of someone else? Do they drift from you at death to find some other mind or heart?’

I first fell in love with Heather Rose’s writing with The Museum of Modern Love and I was highly anticipating this one. It honestly feels like she’s writing at her best and most lyrical in A Great Act of Love. Tasmania, as Van Diemen’s Land, comes to life with such a potent sense of place and connection to the wilderness of it, along with the atmosphere of life in a colony made up primarily of convicts.

‘Wherever ships travel, money travels. But the British pounds have a purity about them. They represent class, and Caroline has determined in the short time she has been in the colony that class matters here perhaps even more than in England, for so few people have it.’

~~~

‘She breathes in forest and salt air. She thinks of her father holding the bark of cinnamon verum to her nose and telling her it was the scent of Ceylon. But this is the scent of here. The mint tang of eucalyptus and the freshness of mountain air.’

The novel is told from multiple points of view, but it is Caroline who is essentially the main character. She has emigrated willingly to Van Dieman’s land under a new identity to escape several things: her family history as French aristocrats overthrown in the French Revolution, her father’s crime, and her own crimes. Along the way on the long ship journey, she informally adopts a boy that was sold to the ship’s captain by his father to settle a debt. They arrive at Van Dieman’s land as mother and son and begin a new life in a place that made it possible to do so with little scrutiny.

‘Yet Caroline continues to choose a little madness, for she worries that otherwise she might be overcome with responsibilities and forget that when there is mud between her toes in the covert waters of the reed-fringed pond, she sees anew her life as a passing moment of opportunity, and is fortified.’

The structure of this novel was brilliantly done, it sifts back and forth, alternating between times and characters, so the story doesn’t unfold in a traditionally linear fashion, and I found this appealing. We found out new pockets of information as we needed to, which in turn, made certain moments more impacting and others more deeply affecting. We also hear from all of the major players, some more than others, but each section offered a new perspective, a new angle, and a deepening of the story.

‘This is what he will know in the years beyond. Memory and dream, the two as alike as if he had lived it all, and the dreams he will have for the rest of his life will be far worse than any of his days.’

Heather Rose writes beautifully, she has such a vivid imagination and ability to bring a scene to life, anything from a swim in a lake or a walk in a meadow to a dance with a lover. I adore her writing and would have happily remained in this novel for another 500 pages. The ending was bittersweet, and both broke my heart and lifted it in turn.

‘As they dance, Caroline finds she wants to move closer so that there is no distance between them. She wants to breathe in the scent of grass after rain that she catches on his skin. She blushes when he smiles as her.’

~~~

‘You wrote your life, my love, she thinks, when he walked into the fields of her memory. You wrote it upon my heart.’

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.