Book Review: “The Cartographer’s Secret” by Tea Cooper.

Maps. Secrets. Australia. Ok, I have taken the bait will the story reel me in?

At the beginning of the novel there are two time frames. In 1911 we meet Lettie in Sydney, a young woman reeling from the accidental death of her brother Thorne. And in 1880 we have Lettie’s aunt, Evie at Yellow Rock in the Hunter Valley, north west of Newcastle in New South Wales.  Evie has been left by her father to collate his notes and create a map to unravel the mystery of what happened to German explorer, Leichhardt. Evie’s father, Lettie’s grandfather, William is obsessed with the explorer Leichhardt whom he had met in 1842. A fateful meeting, which results in a series of misfortunes for his family.

Desperate to get away from Sydney, Lettie takes her new-fangled Model T Ford to Yellow Rock to find her great aunt Olivia, who has been estranged from her mother, Miriam for 30 years. Olivia doesn’t turn out to be the dreadful woman her mother had led her to believe and it turns out there are a lot of secrets in the family. Lettie is drawn into the mysterious disappearance of her aunt 30 years previously. Her aunt, Evie, had seen a reward offered by a newspaper for evidence of where the explorer met his fate. The reward could help restore the family’s finances depleted from funding Leichhardt’s expedition and then an unsuccessful second expedition to find the vanished explorer.

The setting of Yellow Rock and the Hunter Valley is well drawn by the author. I wonder if the call of the koel, an Australian cuckoo, has some symbolic meaning.  The mysteries are slowly revealed as the book progresses. There is a romantic element in the shape of Nathaniel, a drover with a lopsided grin whose look made Lettie’s heart “skip a beat”, but it is the mysteries that keep you turning the pages. Lettie is a very independent young woman but she does somewhat reluctantly appreciate being rescued when her car hits a culvert out the back of Bourke.

The book combines mystery, adventure and family drama with strong female characters against a stunning background of the Hunter Valley of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The story had me hooked.

With thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

My rating 5 out of 5

The Kindle version is available now, the paperback and audio CD will be released on November 16, 2021.