I bought this at the Book Fair Australia last year. I was intrigued by the idea of learning more about Blackbirding. I have friends who were thinking of becoming missionaries some years back. If they did then they weren’t gone for long, unlike the people in this book.
Our story starts in 1871 Nova Scotia, Canada. Annetta is about to be married to John. He is about to be ordained and then sail off into the sunset to become a missionary in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). He’s decided it will be better with a wife and who better to be by his side, but Annetta. There does appear to be some affection in the marriage, it’s not a marriage of convenience even though I make it look that way.
This is a great book despite the two typos I noticed. Having said that, two typos isn’t much nowadays. I was hoping to learn more about Blackbirding by reading this book. Blackbirding is the name given to the process of taking natives from places such as the islands of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and installing them in Queensland to be used as slave labour for various industries including planting and harvesting sugar cane. Some of the young men were happy to leave, some were coerced, others were just stolen.
Some of these people did manage to come back at the end of their term, but there were horrifically scarred, PTSD was rampant as they were not treated well. Reviewing what I know now compared to what I knew before I read this book I find I learned more than I thought. The information about Blackbirding and its aftermath is woven skillfully into the story.
While we’re looking through the eyes of Annetta we do see a lot about the natives. I learned to love some of them and to be shocked at the results of Blackbirding and how the villages were decimated by this practice.
It’s not all about Blackbirding. We learn some of the villagers native practices and we see how much Annetta has fallen in love with the people and the island they’ve settled on. We also see how different missionaries might have different ways of persuading the villagers to turn to Jesus and the Presbyterian Church.
We see the idyllic place the islands can be and we also see a little bit of Australia. It is a bit strange reading how Annetta refers to Australia as the Colonies. This was long before Federation when each state was a separate British self-governing colony. Federation was in 1901, only thirty years after the start of this book. While the only ‘date stamp’ we’re given is at the start of this book I’m sure the book finishes long before Federation.
Some of the racism we see is totally unexpected to Annetta. She had completely forgotten that there was any difference in colour between herself and her island friends. It reminds me of some of the racism depicted in Repacking for Greece: A Mediterranean Odyssey by Sally Jane Smith. It’s where the white person is suddenly confronted with racism and begins to understand the problem.
My last point is about the natural disasters that can befall a place such as Vanuatu (previously the New Hebrides). I love how we see the beginning of the hurricane with the phrase ‘The glass is falling.’ We’re never told they have a barometer, this is a case of showing rather than telling. But the hurricane devasted the village and a number of islands. Several ships were lost at sea, as well as many of the men.
If I say anything more there’ll be spoilers and we can’t have that. I loved this book. It is listed as historical fiction, and it’s based on a lot of facts. I really enjoyed reading the Afterword at the back which gave us some insight as to which bits are true and which made up by the author. There is a long list of credits in the Acknowledgements including books, theses and websites. If you love this book and want to know more about the times they lived in then there’s lots of material in the back to follow up on.
What I want now is to read a book like this from the point of view of the people who were blackbirded. It would be wonderful to read more about them and find out what sort of people they were, what moved them, how they coped being dragged away from family and friends before being shoved into a totally different environment.