Warning: contains “minor spoiler”

In 1836, ten-year-old Harry, child of a Sussex saddler, goes to the town’s market. Betrayed by an older brother, Harry falls victim to the government’s latest ‘tough on crime’ purge and, quite incredibly by modern standards, is sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), all for allegedly stealing an apple. Harry is incarcerated in Cascades Factory and much of the action occurs once an escape has been made.

The narrative weaves between 1840, when escapee Harry arrives in New Zealand, and the previous four years enroute to, and at, Cascades. Harry’s story is one of the settlement of Auckland as the colonists’ Capital, life aboard ship from England to the antipodes, attitudes to the ‘natives’ of New Zealand and what life was like for folk, from working to upper class, as a colony was being created.

It’s a minor spoiler to reveal that Harry is actually Harriet, disguised as a boy in order to make her life easier. This, for me, is the most fascinating aspect of how Duder uses historical fact to illustrate injustice. Harriet, along with the other girls and women transported to Cascades, are subject to horrific abuse at every turn of their journey. The strongest female convicts are used as breeders to populate the new colony, raped, made pregnant, then further maligned for being whores as well as thieves.

As a convict on the run presenting as a boy, Harry learns that males are left to get on with things – ‘I’m a boy, and boys manage,’ - and how easy it is to fool a society that sets so much store in the discrete roles of gender: an ally of Harriet states, wonderingly, ‘amazin’ how a bonnet makes you a girl.’ With the conversations around gender being a feature of modern life, there is much to unpack here.

The colonial attitudes of the day are clearly represented with a nod to more enlightened times, illuminating injustice through the eyes of a child who comes to learn how power is used as a weapon and how the weakest suffer. A single use of the N-word is shocking to today’s reader, acknowledged in the author’s historical note. I’m not convinced it was essential for authenticity.

Harry is an early social justice campaigner, pulling her peers and superiors up on illogical attitudes toward ‘the Maoris;’ having been the victim of great injustice herself, educated by the school of hard knocks, this feels authentic and goes some way to rounding out her character as intelligent, observant and resilient.

With so much finely researched historical detail, it is clear why the publisher is touting The Sparrow as a novel sympathetic with a school curriculum being updated to ensure learners know ‘how our histories have shaped our present day lives.’

The past is in reliable hands with Tessa Duder, whose love of Auckland and passion for New Zealand history is well utilised in the descriptions of the founding of three bays: Mechanics, Official and Commercial:

‘Over the spring and summer, we’ve turned them into dirty, squabbling villages of too many frightened, suspicious and greedy people with something to hide and nowhere to go.’

The parcelling up of land for sale, with land sharks already in operation, is illuminating and disheartening; as it was ever so, the rich are profiting and the poor are exploited. Harry notices, is bemused and is sure there must be a better way.

The Sparrow is a novel aimed at young adults, the darker and more political content making it suited to a reader who can divine such allusions. It will also appeal to admirers of a deftly written historical novel, irrespective of age. Readers of Jenny Pattrick and Fiona Kidman will find much to like here.

As the Department of Education’s website states: Me mātai whakamuri, kia anga whakamua. To shape Aotearoa New Zealand’s future, let’s start with the past. Tessa Duder describes, with equal parts affection and exasperation, a pivotal moment in time that continues to shape us all.

Reviewed by Louise Ward