Review: The Sea Captain's Wife

Title: The Sea Captain's Wife

Author: Jackie French

Publisher: 6th March 2024 by Harlequin Australian, HQ & Mira

Pages: 480 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 4.5 cups

Synopsis:

From bestselling author Jackie French comes a compelling story of murder, mystery, and mutiny on the high seas - and a love so intense it can overcome two different cultures.

You never know what the sea will give you ... or what it will take back.

When Mair McCrae follows her island tradition and hunts for a husband cast up on the beach, she has no notion that the naked, half-drowned man she rescues is not just Captain Michael Dawson, heir to a major shipping firm, but that he's obsessed by a 'ghost ship' carrying golden cargo.

On Big Henry Island women make the decisions and knit the patterns that mark a man as their own. But Big Henry is also a volcano, and threatening to erupt. Yet when Mair agrees to accompany Michael home, she finds that the Australian comfort he promised has a danger just as a social system that tries to keep women confined to small roles at the edges of men's lives.

And as Michael hunts for the 'Ghost' in his revolutionary new steamship, a string of mysterious deaths upends Mair's new life in Sydney.

Who is the murderer, and why is Mair the only one who realises what is happening?

My Thoughts

With a Jackie French book readers are always guaranteed an engaging story. This story is so unique detailing a community of women living on a remote island that is also home to a volcano. This self sufficient group of women work well together being very resourceful. Few men live on the island - excepting those who perhaps have washed ashore from a shipwreck. The main character, Mair, discovers one such man and this is their story. Of course they fall in love, however, where the story really takes off is when Mair agrees to accompany him back to Sydney. 

‘Mair was the perfect wife for a sea captain, he told himself, carefully forgetting in his peace and pleasure that she knew little beyond this island, that she would find his world as strange as he found this’

Here readers will discover how Mair struggles to adjust to Sydney society with the running of the family shipping company (both of which the reader must give some leeway at her quick adaptation given her sheltered existence). Add to the story a ghost ship filled with gold, a volcano that erupts, murder and mystery and this book quickly escalates to become a great tale. Jackie draws excellent contrasts in the two ways of living Mair has been exposed to and the role of women. The ghost ship and mysterious deaths just provide an added bonus being the proverbial icing on top. 

‘The most important criterion for a sea captain's wife was a woman who was used to waiting in a household of women for her husband's ship to sail to harbour.’

The Sea Captain’s Wife is another excellent book for lovers of historical fiction as it is really quite unique with its societal contrasting observations. Jackie really is a master of cleverly combining a great tale from the past with strong female characters who invariably are seeking to uncover a mystery. 

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This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.