HARVEST OF THE SUN - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s third book in the Retallick Saga Harvest of the Sun was published in 1978. It’s a direct sequel of Chase the Wind. 

Josh Retallick and Miriam Thackeray with their young son Daniel are sailing to Australia when their ship is wrecked off the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa.

Their small party encounter the Bushmen who have survived in the harsh land and climate for thousands of years. At times of prolonged drought the Bushpeople would abandon newborn babies in order that the mother would survive. (p59).

Next they befriend the Herero tribesmen where they find a German missionary, Hugo Walder, whose ‘capacity for loving his fellow-men was as large as the frame that held his great heart’ (p98).                   

Josh, Miriam and Daniel live with the missionary and the Herero. They become hardened to the land and its people, treading with care where the neighbouring chief Jonker is concerned. And there is the chief’s vicious ally, the Boer Jacobus Albrecht to contend with as well. ‘Africa is a restless continent, ever changing and shifting in moods – a vast rumbling pot-pourri where fortunes swirl this way and that, like the sand shifting before the four winds’ (p133).

As this is a saga, the narrative – third-person omniscient – spans the period from the early 1840s to 1858. The family also befriends a Jewish trader Aaron and his daughter Hannah. By the time Daniel is seventeen he is an experienced tracker and good shot with a rifle. There are mining opportunities for Josh here too. Inevitably there are clashes between Jonker’s people and the Herero and Josh and his family are caught in between. The reader soon cares about these characters as they overcome a succession of travails, not least the neighbouring Zulu tribesmen, successors to the mighty Shaka. Sadly, good people succumb. Also, past events in their saga have a tendency to rear up and bite. There’s tension, suspense, humility, humanity, physical and geographical conflict, and great insights of the period and place. Indeed, Thompson repeatedly puts the reader in the scene and does not shirk from revealing the unpleasant gruesome aspects of the time along with the raw beauty of the land. This is history and as such needs no trigger warnings.

Any fans of H Rider Haggard or Wilbur Smith would appreciate this saga. The next instalment is Singing Spears (which I read out of order in 1990 and was the first Thompson book I’d read – and clearly not the last).

CHASE THE WIND - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s second book in his Retallick saga, Chase the Wind, was published in 1977 and won the Best Historical Novelist Award. In the chronological story sense it’s the sequel to Ben Retallick (1980) though clearly the first book in the series was published three years later!

The story is written in the omniscient viewpoint in order to provide the thoughts and actions of assorted characters, and works well, pulling the reader into the saga.

Set mainly in 1840s Cornwall, it begins with young Josh Retallick down the copper mine of Wheal Sharptor – the same mine his father worked in. Ben, aged 35, was reckoned an “old man” by mining standards. ‘It was an era when a miner who had seen his fortieth birthday below ground was something of a rarity’ (p8). They worked hard, digging ‘deep into the bowels of the earth, raising mountains of rubble around their shafts’ (p65).

Josh is being taught to read and write by the local preacher, William Thackeray, a good man who ‘was concerned for the souls of his people... he saw no reason why they should suffer unnecessary hardships in this life in order to enter the same heaven to which their far more comfortable employers were bound’ (p61).

It’s the time of the Corn Laws that created a cost-of-living crisis for the working men and women, a time when unionism was being advocated at great risk to those who espoused it. ‘The shortage of corn had been growing steadily worse throughout England. It had not been helped by the government laws which prevented corn being imported, in a misguided attempt to protect the interests of the farmers’ (p64).

For many years as youngsters, Josh had been a play friend of Miriam Trago, a wild child. But Josh had to put childish play aside as he was going away on an apprenticeship to become a mine-engineer. While on his apprenticeship he befriends Francis Trevithick and is not slow to grasp the nettle of new inventions, always seeking greater efficiency and increased safety.

Miriam is given some advice by the preacher: ‘You must find a man who recognises that a woman is capable of thinking for herself – a rarity in these parts, I’m afraid’ (p130). Before long Miriam was thinking for herself all right – vociferously saddened and angry at the lot of a miner’s wife. If her husband died in a mine, she was cast out of her cottage within a month. Her future might be the poor house or selling herself to drunken miners to feed her children. ‘That’s the system her husband gave his life for’ (p155).

Not all the mine owners are despots; some are considerate with a conscience, and it’s Josh’s fortunate lot that he works for such men. But the odds are still stacked against him and tragedy strikes more than once to contrive the separation of Josh and Miriam before they can truly be together. The preacher becomes a zealot for unionism, though ‘He’s the spoon as does the stirring, not the pot as sits on the fire’ (p349). Betrayal, conflict with the armed forces of the law, love and death, trial and retribution create tension for the reader. The pages fly by as the denouement closes in.

A very satisfying historical novel that puts you there, with believable characters, which impelled me to pick up the next book in the series to find out what happens – Harvest of the Sun.

Ernest Victor Thompson died in 2012, aged 81.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

‘Where are we?’ he asked as he swung his legs to the ground (p104). This scene is indoors so the ‘ground’ should read the ‘floor’. A common error to be found in a number of books.

‘(Josh and John) galloped past the bridge...’ (p353). Having written several westerns, I have tussled with this ambiguity. Of course the rider isn’t doing the galloping, but the horse is; maybe instead it could read ‘They led their horses in a gallop past the bridge’. A quibble, really; we know what is meant.

NO LESS THAN THE JOURNEY - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s novel No Less Than the Journey was published in 2008. To all intents and purposes it’s a western

The epigraph is ‘I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars’ from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: ‘the poet implied in the scheme of things a blade of grass is no less important in its way than the stars in the heavens’ (p331).

The tale primarily concerns young Cornish miner Wesley Curnow who has arrived in the United States in order to seek out his uncle who is working in the mines in Missouri and find work. On his way he befriends US Marshal Aaron Berryman. While sailing on the riverboat Missouri Belle the pair get to know two Mexican women working at the casino tables – Anabelita and Lola – and become close...

Wes’s journey takes him to the mountains where he learns to handle a sixgun with the help of mountainman Old Charlie, and then travels to a number of towns where he puts the guns to use helping the innocent.

The geographical and political background sound solid – some ten years after the end of the Civil War, and the characters are interesting but I wasn’t invested enough in Wes or Aaron. The writing is not as involving or as descriptive as his earlier works, the people are not as fleshed-out as others he has created. Still a worthwhile read, but having enjoyed several of his books, this one didn’t grab me nearly so much.

Sadly, the novel pales in comparison to Thompson’s other book set in the West, Cry Once Alone (which I read in 2012). I felt that there was too much repetitive explication. The ending seemed rushed – and while it may have given a nod to the stark realism of those days, I found it was unsatisfactory. Four more of his books were published after this; two of them in the year he died (2012) aged 81.  

(The cover, while well-painted, seems slightly off; the saddle doesn’t appear to have a cantle; Wes wore a gunbelt with two holsters, none of which is in evidence; the cowboy is wearing chaps but at no time was this apparel worn by Wes...)

Editorial comment:

Thompson relates how the Missouri Belle sailed the river at night. Yet as a rule riverboats didn’t attempt passage at night, it was too dangerous – hidden snags and rocks had claimed too many boats over the years.  (Explained in my book Death for a Dove...)

BEN RETALLICK - Book review

 

The first of E.V. Thompson’s nine book historical saga, Ben Retallick, was published in 1980. It begins in Cornwall in March 1818. The title character is fifteen and has just survived the flooding of the tin mine where he worked. His father Pearson, 37, also a miner, is suffering from years of working underground mining tin: ‘I’ve spent too many years following tin lodes, Ben. I carry a part of every one of them inside me now.’ In short, he’s finished; the tin in his blood and lungs.  Ben makes the acquaintance of Jesse Henna, a young girl and neighbour. There appears to be a mystery involving Jesse’s mother Maude and the local landowner Sir John Vincent. We will learn the answer in good time. However, when Sir John’s Colman inherits the manor house and land, he casts out the Hennas and encourages his game-keeper Reuben Holyoak to wed Jesse. Colman is not a pleasant man.

Holyoak is unaware of the attraction Ben and Jesse share. ‘In the darkness of the night, with only the stars to bear witness, Ben and Jesse had consummated their love, and Jesse had crossed the threshold of womanhood’ (p100).

Times were hard in those days, and people suffered real grinding poverty, and Thompson reflects this well. All the ingredients are here: suicide, press gang abductions, still-born birth, mob anger, fishermen and tin miners at odds, the imposition of cruel law, death on the gallows, drunken domestic violence, blighted love, poignant deaths, kind-hearted neighbours and social commentary that never dominates the story and characters.

The second volume is Chase the Wind (which surprisingly was published in 1977!).   

Book review - Becky

E.V. Thompson was a very popular storyteller with over forty historical novels to his name. Becky was published in 1988.

Impecunious artist Fergus Vincent arrives in Lewin’s Mead, a slum area in Bristol in the early 1850s. He’s seeking a friend and mentor, Henry who lives there. Henry told him ‘A good artist is accepted wherever he chooses to work, but he must observe the rules there – their code. Break that code and he might as well pack up and leave.’

Fergus virtually trips over an urchin as he’s seeking his friend. Becky, the unkempt girl of about fourteen summers offers to take him to the attic room, informing him that Henry died from alcoholism, owing rent. On their way, Fergus is involved in an affray with the blackguard bully Joe Skewes and barely escapes, thanks to the intervention of Becky. The Skewes family will haunt his life for a long time afterwards…

With Becky’s aid, Fergus finds his friend’s abode, which is filled with drawings and paintings that will serve to pay for the outstanding rent. On an impulse, Fergus decides to rent the room himself.

Thompson immerses you in the story immediately, with plenty of colourful description and characterisation and humour. His landlady, Ida Stokes is a hard case but with a good heart. Becky soon realises that Fergus has considerable artistic talent when he quickly sketches her admiring some birds outside the attic window. This first sketch will become a much-prized painting much later. Becky is bold, irreverent and says what she feels. ‘You’ve drawn the me that’s inside. Not the me that other people see…. I’m not sure I like it.’

Having been invalided out of the navy, Fergus hasn’t a lot of money. That’s why he elected to live in this attic room, as it was cheap. He grasped the idea that he would sketch the people of the slums, those on the dockside and in the taverns, and perhaps he could earn enough to live off his efforts.

Gradually, he becomes accepted by the local populace, the police, and particularly Becky. There’s nothing untoward between him and the girl, but he does become very fond of her and sketches her a great deal. At one point, he comes into contact with Fanny Tennant, the daughter of an alderman and a teacher of poor children. Fanny becomes his champion, wanting him to succeed in his art. Unfortunately jealousy is aroused in Becky’s breast and problems arise. 

Throughout, Thompson presents the unpalatable but real situation for the slum dwellers. There are good souls who want to help, like Fanny. But it seems that the majority of the Bristol upper class would rather turn a blind eye. This is brought to a head when Fergus gets involved with the plight of a number of Irish immigrants who become prey to cholera. Women and children die, and they’re shunted out of the area, without much medical aid. Fergus recorded their harrowing ordeal with his sketches and managed to prick many a conscience.

The relationship between Fergus and Becky is fraught with obstacles, and their friends suffer too. There do not seem to be any easy answers; how do you pull yourself out of the slum environment and make something of your life? For able-bodied men, they could join the army or navy, but for the women, there was little hope. Thompson captures the despair and the injustice of the time. 

Here’s Fergus’s viewpoint as he approaches a pawn shop with one of his paintings: ‘There were many varied items offered for sale, each one mute evidence of human failure, carrying price-tags that put a pathetic value on heartbreak and poverty. Wedding rings were here aplenty, with brooches and bangles. Few were of any great value, but most had meant far more than money to their late owners…’

The ending is not a happy one. Yet there is a sequel, Lewin’s Mead (1996) which returns to the travails of gutsy Becky in the slum. I have yet to read that, but the romantic in me hopes for a happy ending, even if real life at that time probably had very few of those.

E.V. Thompson can always be relied upon to tell a good tale, whether that's embedded in social deprivation or conflict. He died in 2012, aged 81.