Catherine Norton, Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars, HarperCollins Publishers, July 2024, 256 pp., RRP $22.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781460763179
It’s 1866 and Hester Hitchins has been sent with her siblings to stay with her uncle, who resents looking after them and immediately sets them all to work. Hester knows she is destined for bigger things, including learning to navigate by the stars, so she can find her father, who is missing at sea.
Disguised as a boy, Hester sits the entrance exam for Addington’s Nautical Navigation Academy and not only passes but achieves the highest score. But can Hester convince the Academy to let a girl take her rightful place? Why does the bumbling schoolmaster, Captain Slingsby, seem to know very little about navigation and why are Lord and Lady Addington so preoccupied with other things, they can’t see their school is falling apart?
Inspired by the work of astronomer, author and instrument maker, Janet Taylor, and set during a time of extraordinary discoveries about the universe, much of it by amateur female astronomers, this is a story for readers who love historical fiction, inventions and feisty females who refuse to be held back.
Reviewed by Deborah Abela
www.deborahabela.com
See Heather Gallagher’s review of Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars
