Great read

Don't be fooled. Heather Rose is not a writer; she is a magician. Her magic power? Being able to transport readers back in time to faraway lands. In A Great Act of Love, the destination is 19th century Hobart, where a young British woman,

- by Heather Rose, Allen & Unwin

Historic EPIC A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose, Allen & Unwin

Caroline, moves into a cottage next to an abandoned vineyard. The vines were a starting point for Heather, who is a Lutruwita/Tasmania local. “At dinner in Hobart one night, a famous winemaker told me of an early vineyard in colonial Tasmania that had made sparkling wine which was so good it won an award in Paris in the late 1820s,” she says of the legendary story that sparked the initial idea for this novel, Heather’s tenth book, but her first historical fiction.

The main character of Caroline is based on Heather’s grandmother’s great-grandmother, who was the first person on her mother’s side of the family to arrive as a free settler in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land, as it was known then. Heather was told her ancestor was a young widow whose husband had fallen over Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. Caroline, too, presents herself as a young widow to her fellow settlers. She doesn’t reveal that she comes from a family with champagne bubbles in their blood – or that her father is serving time on Norfolk Island after committing a horrific crime.

To capture the times that her narrative spans, Heather researched the French Revolution, Victorian England and colonial Australia, and read some 160 works from the era. To do the champagne storyline justice, she interviewed winemakers, including Andrew Pirie, the maker of Apogee, which is Heather’s favourite Tasmanian sparkling.

The research is remarkable, but the storytelling is something else entirely. This is Heather's gift: bringing a period of time to life through the characters, setting and events. "The weaving together of fact and fiction to create a story that is both true to its time, but compelling and vibrant for modern readers, that's the real craft," says Heather, who masters the feat.