Photos: Kellie Blizard
For Tessa Duder, women have never been background characters. Tired of books that showed them as passive or “helpmates”, the Auckland author’s main goal for the past four decades has been to provide younger readers with strong female role models.
Her Alex novels inspired a generation of Kiwi girls to follow their dreams, which she was compelled to write after finding an absence of books about “feisty girls” for her own four daughters to read.
And Tessa’s latest book, The Sparrow – which has been announced as a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults – is no different. This time, the young protagonist is a 13-year-old British convict called Harriet, who is transported to the notorious Cascades Female Factory in Australia’s Hobart. Through a series of misadventures, she arrives in the Waitematā Harbour when Auckland was declared New Zealand’s new capital on September 18, 1840.
Harriet’s experiences for the next six months, while living rough and seeking work to buy food, closely follow Auckland’s historical records.
The novel is Tessa’s first foray into historical fiction. Writing her 2015 biography of “Auckland’s First Lady” Sarah Mathew inspired her. Sarah Mathew, a former English governess, married the country’s first surveyor, Felton Mathew, and helped build a colony here.
“Through the journals of 35-year-old Sarah and the letters she wrote between 1858 and 1862, we learn so much,” says Tessa. She’s chatting from her seaside home in Auckland’s Devonport.
“She made detailed and shrewd observations, giving me valuable insight into the struggles of those earliest settlers.
“Historical fiction can play an important role in deepening young adults’ awareness of the past. It adds colour to the accounts of how their ancestors struggled and survived. And Auckland’s unusual, even unique, founding story is well worth re-telling.”
As a fourth-generation Kiwi, Tessa has long taken an interest in the 19th-century exodus from Britain and Europe, whether as convicts or emigrants.
“My grandfather Ernest Wycherley arrived on the ship Jessie Readman from England to New Zealand in 1885,” tells Tessa. “He was one years old and the youngest of 10 children. Imagine keeping 10 children safe and fed on a ship for six months – it beggars belief!
“His father Charles was a saddler. One of my editors commented, ‘Oh, a saddler probably wouldn’t have been able to read and write.’ So I said, ‘I’ll show you his very detailed shipboard diary.’
“I’m so proud of it. He wrote in it every single day, despite the 10 kids – or possibly because of them!” she laughs.
In 2013, Tessa also asked if she could be a passenger on the Spirit of New Zealand, returning from Sydney, to have experience being at sea in a big ship.
“Even though it’s a modern ship with modern conveniences, she’s still got an old-fashioned rig,” she explains. “Being out in the middle of the Tasman was good first-hand experience… Feeling utterly isolated and seasick as though it’s never going to end. It was a valuable resource when I was describing Harriet’s own voyage.”
Now in her early eighties, Tessa says she wouldn’t feel comfortable writing a modern teenage book set in contemporary times.
“I’ve lost touch with that age group, except for my lovely grandson who’s 18. So being able to go back in time is wonderful because it’s not a problem. I can research what a teenage girl would have worn in 1840 and how speaking patterns differed.”
She’s sticking to historical fiction for that reason and is currently writing a sequel to The Sparrow before work begins on another historical novel set in the Antarctic.
And is it safe to say, a courageous female character will again be at the centre?
“Oh, yes!” asserts the author of nearly 50 books. “In recent years, we’ve become much more aware that a very large majority of our history and commentary assumes that the male point of view is the universal point of view – and it’s not!
“For example, I’ve heard many men say, ‘Oh, the 1950s and ’60s were a wonderful time for New Zealand. We were selling everything we could produce to England. People wanted to get order back into their lives after the war. It was such a prosperous time…’
“Yet if anybody says that to me, I reply, ‘Excuse me? That was the male experience.’ For females, the fifties and also early ’60s were the pits. They were times of very low expectations for middle-class girls. Their only job prospects before marriage were to be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary. The thought of a woman piloting a jumbo jet or being prime minister would have been inconceivable.
“So I feel we’ve come a hell of a long way in my lifetime. And writing about strong, ambitious females is more important than ever to redress that balance.”
The winners of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults winners will be announced on August 14. For more info, see nzbookawards.nz.
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