
“I don’t know if I’m just lucky or getting really good at picking a good book because this was also a big five stars for me – that’s three five-star reads from three this year so far.
This story, as always in Sue’s books, follows two strong women. Ann Inett, a mother-of-two is found guilty of theft and transported to NSW on the First Fleet. On board she meets naval officer Philip Gidley King who asks Ann to be his housekeeper when he is sent to establish a smaller colony on Norfolk Island. While they never marry, they live like husband and wife and Ann bears King two sons before he’s called back to England to provide an in-person update on the colony of Sydney.
When he returns to Sydney two years later, this time in the capacity of Governor of NSW, he greets Ann with a pregnant wife alongside him, the sweet-tempered but naive Anna Josepha.
Sue has such a talent for finding the forgotten yet captivating stories of the women of the early colony and fictionalising them in such a wonderful way that she brings the past to life in vivid colour. While we can never know the secret conversations that took place, she bases her fictional scenes on fact.
And I love how she’s doing a reverse timeline of sorts with her books. In her first book, Elizabeth & Elizabeth – Sue told the story of Elizabeth Macquarie, wife of the fifth governor of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie, and Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of the beligerant wool merchant, John MacArthur. In her second book, That Bligh Girl, she went back in time to tell the story of Mary Bligh, who accompanied her father, William Bligh, when he became fourth governor of NSW. And now, she has gone back further to tell the story of Phillip Gidley King, the third Governor of NSW.
I once read a quote to describe fictionalised history that said something like ‘a historian will tell you what happened, a novelist will tell you what it felt like’ and I really think this describes Sue’s approach perfectly. The streets of colonial Sydney, Norfolk Island and Parramatta come to life in this book.”