New Zealand-based author Jenny Pattrick is known in her home country for writing bestsellers. Her popular books are regularly described as ‘rollicking yarns’. Catching the Current, indeed, adds another ‘rollicking yarn’ to her oeuvre. In her most recent novel, Jenny Pattrick successfully marries fact with fiction, seamlessly weaving historical characters and events together with fictional ones. Catching the Current is set in the 1800s, it takes the reader to the Faroe Islands, and tells the story of Denmark’s early connection with New Zealand. While it may be a historical saga it is also a book about stories, and central to this novel is the tale of Conrad Rasmussan and an unusual woman named Anahuia. Pattrick’s storytelling skills are evident in Catching the Current, a tale about traversing new lands, old songs, seafaring, war, love, and much more. This is a well-researched and deftly plotted novel with enough suspense to keep the reader flipping the pages. Real and fictional characters are skillfully rendered, while the pace and lyrical prose add to the historical tone of this novel. Catching the Current will appeal to lovers of wellwritten historical fiction and anyone with an interest in New Zealand’s history.

Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based fiction writer and bookseller

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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