HEATHER ROSE A Great Act of Love. Reviewed by Ann Skea

The bestselling author of The Museum of Modern Love turns to historical fiction in her new novel set in convict-era Van Dieman’s Land.

Do not be fooled by the cover of this book. In spite of the pretty young woman gazing at you through a tangle of ribbons and the prominent word ‘LOVE’ in gold letters, this book is not about romantic love at all, and the young woman is far more interesting than that.

Caroline Colbert, whose life we follow, is clever, determined, caring and well educated by her father, who liked to discuss philosophy with her. Yet, at the age of 23, she has led, and is still leading, a life of duplicity and lies.

The book begins as Caroline is confronted by the sudden, terrifying appearance of her father with a bloody knife in his hand. Only later do we learn what has happened. We then jump to a room in a London house in which music, dancing and conversation are taking place in a downstairs ballroom. Caroline is poring over a map of the world:

And there she finds it, at the edge of the Western Hemisphere, a black mark at the 30th latitude smaller than a flea. Norfolk Island. The dream returns. Her father caught in a shaft of sand. The walls are collapsing and he is reaching up, calling her name.

So, it seems that Caroline’s French father, Jacques-Louis Colbert, has been arrested, tried for murder, spared the death penalty but sentenced, instead, to life in the distant English penal colony of Norfolk Island. His story and his horrific experiences become part of the book; so, too, does the account of his childhood as the son of a French aristocrat and the way he and his older sister, Henriette, were smuggled from France to Scotland after their parents were beheaded in the French Revolution. These stories eventually become interwoven with Caroline’s experiences. But for the present, suddenly,

Tante Henriette is at the doorway indicating they must depart. She is sporting a neat black beard, cravat and frock coat, and carrying a satchel.

I had to read this sentence twice, it seemed like a mistake. But no, when Tante Henriette and Caroline get back to Tante Henriette’s apartment:

they shed their wigs and shoes, frock coats, braces, collars and cufflinks. They peel away beard and moustache. They brush out their hair and pin it up, then button and lace their dresses.

Clearly something strange is going on, and although it all sounds melodramatic, Rose handles these scenes with humour and care, and they offer glimpses of the character of Caroline and her father’s older sister.

Over a game of chess Caroline broaches what has been preoccupying her.

She says: ‘There are offers of passage for unmarried women to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.’

He aunt arches an eyebrow. ‘You are not considering that?’

‘I am,’ says Caroline.

‘But why?’ asks Tante Henriette. ‘He will never be released – and even if he was, he will not be the man you remember.’

‘It is nothing to do with him,’ says Caroline, progressing her attack on the board, keenly aware of her aunt’s greater skill ….

‘Of course,’ continues her aunt, ‘someone of military rank may offer his hand. Perhaps he is blind in one eye from a wound he took for England as a young man. It oozes and smells. He has the gout, too … and four or five ugly children in need of a new mother …‘ She takes Caroline’s knight ….

‘I could advertise,’ Caroline says at last. ‘Young woman of disreputable family seeks rich husband for colonial adventure.’

What Caroline chooses to do adds to the mysteries. Suddenly, she seems to have money. Disguised as a widow, and taking her Scottish mother’s maiden name, she becomes Mrs Douglas and boards the brigantine Alliance in New York. ‘I have the means to make a modest investment in the journey, if your ship were to continue on from Otaheite to Van Diemen’s Land,’ she tells the captain, and she asks his advice about acquiring ‘a suitable cargo of goods’.

 On her voyage via Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Ayres, Cape Horn, Valparaiso and the Pacific Island of Otaheite, she sees new lands, meets the other passengers, avoids the attentions of an unctuous Spanish widower, and gets to know and teach 10-year-old Quill, who has been assigned to her as cabin boy. When they arrive in Hobart, she agrees a sum of money with Captain de Hoog, and tells Quill that he can leave the ship and stay with her, if he wants that.

‘Do you own me now?’ Quill asks when she tells him that she has freed him from his debt to Captain de Hoog. They are seated at the small table in her emptied cabin, the table where they had sat so often together, where he had pursued his studies and learned to play chess.

‘No, Quill,’ she says. ‘I do not. You are a free person. You belong to yourself, now and always.’

In Hobart, Caroline takes pains to remain as unobtrusive as possible in a town where gossip is common currency. She decides that Quill will be her ‘ward’: they will be ‘Mistress Caroline Douglas and Master Quill Douglas from New York’. She buys a run-down cottage on the land of Captain Swanston, director of the Derwent Bank, and insists that he tells no-one that she owns it and that he keeps her investments in his bank a secret. She forms a business relationship with him and a friendship with his wife Georgiana. She also becomes friendly with Cornelius, the black blacksmith employed by Swanston, and Cornelius’s past as an escaped slave from America, horrifying as it is, eventually becomes part of Caroline’s story in a terrifying scene towards the end of the book.

Caroline loves the wildness, the strange animals, and the unpredictable weather of Van Diemen’s Land. She learns of its early days, wonders about the people who were displaced by the colonisers, and sees the terrible conditions and cruelty the convicts endure, all the time aware that her father is suffering even worse conditions on Norfolk Island, where the commandant, Anderson, and his predecessor, Morrison, are known for their excessive brutality.

Having long known of Jacques-Louis’s knowledge of wines and champagne-making, knowledge he was taught as grew up among the vineyards on his father’s large French estates, Caroline notices the abandoned vines in the overgrown land around her cottage, and she determines to restore them. The hard, relentless work of clearing the land, learning basic skills from Cornelius, who had worked with the founder of this once flourishing vineyard, and managing the inevitable failures due to the climate, becomes Caroline’s life. It is also her investment and that of Swanston, who is persuaded to support her in this project. Against them is the status of Van Diemen’s Land as a convict colony and the reluctance, elsewhere, to accept anything ‘tainted by convict labour’.

When, late in the book, Caroline does meet a young man she is attracted to, the dilemma about revealing her true story becomes acute. Accompanying him to a play at the Theatre Royal, she looks at the audience, and she knows that

Some significant portion must have served time for some crime or other. She knows she is little different from them, disguised now in their coats and gowns, tie pins and hat pins, cufflinks and tiaras. Except by some benevolent hand, she has not been caught.

A Great Act of Love is an unusual book. Rose weaves many stories into it and strands of poetry lighten some of the darkest parts. Caroline survives to look back on ‘the canto of her life’, and to muse on being: ‘Dust, air, earth. Returned to the great wholeness. A fleeting presence who had seen this sparkling world and then was gone.’

Heather Rose A Great Act of Love Allen and Unwin 2025 PB 496pp $34.99 

Dr Ann Skea is a freelance reviewer, writer and an independent scholar of the work of Ted Hughes. She is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE 1994, and currently available for free download here). Her work is internationally published and her Ted Hughes webpages (ann.skea.com) are archived by the British Library.

You can buy A Great Act of Love from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

Tags: Australian fiction, Australian writers, colonial Australia, convicts, Heather | Rose, historical fiction, Norfolk Island, Van Diemans Land, winemaking